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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






JOHN B. GOUGH 




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JOHN B. GOUGH 



The Apostle of Cold Water 



by X 

CARLOS MARTYN 

i i 
Editor of "American Reformers ," and Author of 
" Wendell Phillips; the Agitator" etc, , etc. 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES. 



FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
London and Toronto 

1893 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 




4£f7^y 



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Copyright, 1893, by the 

FUNK & WAGNALLS COiMFANY. 

[Registered at Stationers' Hall, London, England.] 



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/iDercefces jferrer /IDartgn, 

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Bncoura^efc b£ ber Counsels, 
anD pruned bg ber Criticisms, 

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Xovin^lg anD Gratefully 

Befcicatefc* 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

Preface xi-xiv 



PART I. 

SANDGATE BY THE SEA. 

I. Beside the Cradle 17-20 

II. Early Scenes and Incidents 21-29 



PART II. 



THE EMIGRANT. 



I. Departure from Home 33 - 37 

II. The Farmer's Boy 38-42 

III. The Young Bookbinder 43-46 

IV. The Pauper Funeral 47—52 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

PART III. 

THE INFERNO. 



PAGE. 



I- Adrift " . . 55-57 

II. On the Stage 58-63 

III. The Adventures of a Drunkard . . . 64-70 

IV. Delirium Tremens 71-76 



PART IV. 

RECOVERY AND RELAPSE. 

I. The Kind Touch on the Shoulder . . 79-83 

II. Small Beginnings of a Great Career . . 84-91 

III. Tempted 92-96 

PART V. 

IN THE ARENA. 

I. On the Platform 99-109 

II. The " Doctored " Soda-Water .... 110-114 
III. " Footprints on the Sands of Time " . . 1 15-135 

PART VI. 

THE FIRST VISIT TO GREAT BRITAIN. 

I. The Debut in London 139-151 

II. " How Dear to My Heart Are the Scenes 

of My Childhood " I 5 2 - I 55 

III. Here, There, and Yonder, in the British 

Isles 156-165 



CONTENTS. IX 

PART VII. 

AT WORK IN AMERICA. 

PAGE. 

I. " Westward the Course of Empire Takes 

Its Way " 169-17 1 

II. The Tide is Out 172-176 



PART VIII. 

THE SECOND BRITISH TOUR. 

I. The CSurt of Exchequer 179-185 

II. Continental Glimpses 186-189 

III. A Dip Into Ireland 190-194 

IV. British Morals, Manners, and Men . . 195-206 



PART IX. 

RENEWED USEFULNESS AT HOME. 

I. A Change of Base ........ 209-217 

II. Fete Day at " Hillside " 218-223 

III. Footprints of Rum 224-231 



PART X. 

THE THIRD ENGLISH VISIT. 

I. After Eighteen Years 235-246 

II. The Streets of London 247-258 

III. A Silver Trowel 959-261 



X CONTENTS. 

PART XI. 

THE HOARY HEAD. 

PAGE. 

I. Old Activities in New Relationships . . 265-273 

II. The Philosophy of Temperance . . . 274-291 

III. Beggars, Borrowers, and Bores . . . 292-300 

IV. Personal Experiences on the Platform . 301-315 
V. What Manner of Man Was This? . . . 316-325 

Index ...,..,.,,,,,.. 327-336 



PRE FAC E 



This is an old story retold. Mr. Gough has writ- 
ten and spoken so voluminously and charmingly of his 
life, and his career was run so continuously under the 
public eye that it is well nigh impossible to jot down 
new facts. Nor is there need of it. His experiences 
are so full of moral warning in his fall, and of moral 
inspiration in his recovery, that they will be profit- 
ably rehearsed for generations. All that any indi- 
vidual biographer can hope to do is to group the 
ascertained facts in a new setting. In the perform- 
ance of this task the writer has made free use of the 
existing material, and here confesses his special in- 
debtedness to Mr. Gough's own records. When other 
and related topics have called for treatment, other 
and related books have been used. 

Although of English birth, we have appropriated 
Mr. Gough as an American reformer. He was an 
American citizen. His home was here. He voted 
here. His public career began and ended here. And 
his Americanism was of the most pronounced and 
lofty type. 

John B. Gough was a man of the people — an in- 
spired mechanic. He began life at the freezing 
point of the human thermometer. At the age of 
eighteen he fell below zero. Seven or eight years 



Xll PREFACE. 

later he rose to summer heat, and produced the flow- 
ers and fruits of summer. He maintained this heat 
and fertility through forty-three years, and died at 
sixty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. Such a life is in- 
structive in all its phases. It carries inspiration to 
the poor and miserable and blind and naked. 

Mr. Gough's career as a reformer was based upon 
his personal experience. In pleading with men and 
for men he obeyed Sir Philip Sydney's recipe for 
poetry, " Look into thine own heart, and write/' His 
utterances were realistic because * e had realized 
them. He touched others to smiles or tears, because 
he was familiar with the grotesqueness of the evil 
against which he inveighed, with the maudlin laugh- 
ter, and the delirium tre??iens of the drunkard. 

To this fundamental knowledge of his theme he 
joined rare powers of speech. 'Tis difficult to classify 
him as a public speaker. He was sui generis. God 
made him, and broke the die. He was a whole vari- 
ety troupe in one little form. In the course of an 
address he enacted a dozen parts, with such fidelity 
that the last seemed the best. He told a story now 
in the Irish brogue, now in broken German, now in 
the Yorkshire dialect, and the hall was convulsed 
with laughter. He made an appeal, and the people 
were intensely stirred. His voice sank into pathos, 
and the storm broke in a rain of tears. He turned 
upon an interrupter, and his repartee blazed and 
burned like a flash of powder. He had that wonder- 
ful power which we call magnetism. He used the 
language of the people. He spoke all over, eyes as 
well as hands, face as well as lips, even his coat-tails. 
And his earnestness made him the unconscious hero 



PREFACE. Xlii 

of his own cause. Mr. Gough on the platform was 
an histrionic exhibition of a superlative type. 

His voice was not particularly sweet, but it pos- 
sessed incredible power, and ran the gamut of thought 
and feeling, 

" From grave to gay, from lively to severe." 

In listening to him one recalled Bulwer's description 
of O'Connell's voice: 

" Beneath his feet the human ocean lay 
And wave on wave rolled into space away. 
Methought no clarion could have sent its sound 
Even to the center of the hosts around ; 
And, as I thought, rose the sonorous swell, 
As from some church-tower swings the silvery bell 
Aloft and clear, from airy tide to tide 
It glided, easy as a bird may glide. 
Even to the verge of that vast audience sent, 
It played with each wild passion as it went : 
Now stirred the uproar, now the murmur stilled, 
And sobs and laughter answered as it willed." 

Is it any wonder, after all, that such a man, thus 
variously gifted, and with something to say worth 
hearing, should have held audiences breathless on 
both sides of the Atlantic for nearly half a century, 
with no diminution of his power whether to draw or 
to inspire ? 

But Mr. Gough had other strengths besides his 
gifts. " There is no eloquence," said Emerson, " with- 
out a man behind it." He put an honest character 
behind his words. You believed in the man. It was 
not a mere exhibition that he gave. In the midst of 
his wildest utterances he maintained his balance. A 



XIV PREFACE. 

robust common sense was always dominant. And 
there was a high moral purpose that dignified his very 
mimicry. 

As a temperance leader Mr. Gough has not been 
and will not be outgrown. He grasped the reform he 
advocated as Atlas did the globe. And he put it upon 
the indestructible basis of moral suasion, personal 
piety, and prohibitive law. 

Have we gotten, can we get, beyond his ideal ? 

Two women were this reformer's guardian angels. 
First, his mother ; when he lost her he lost himself. 
Next, Mary Gough ; when he found her he found 
himself. 

'Tis the purpose of the following pages to show how 
God made him; how drink unmade him; and how 
sobriety and a moral motive remade him. 

Carlos Martyn. 
Chicago, 1893. 



PART I. 

Sandgate by the Sea 



The influences that go into us in boyhood 
fashion the experiences that we go into in 
manhood. 

— Carlos Martyn. 



BESIDE THE CRADLE. 

Jane Gough presented her husband John with a 
bouncing boy on the 226. of August, in the year of 
our Lord, 1817. In the hour of birth the mother 
cried, and the babe cried; the first, in pain, the second, 
to start his lungs (so the doctors said), ever after 
in good working order. In the death-hour, nearly 
seventy years later, these early weepers were hushed, 
and the world did the crying. Birth — death ! and 
between the two the unconsciousness of infancy, the 
carelessness of boyhood, the recklessness of youth, 
the sunlight and shadow of manhood — in one word, 
life! 

These parents lived at Sandgate, in the county of 
Kent, England. The father was a common soldier, 
who had served through the Napoleonic wars, first in 
the Fortieth and then in the Fifty-second Regiments 
of Light Infantry. He entered the King's service in 
1798, and was discharged in 1823, with a pension of 
twenty pounds a year, and a medal with six clasps, 
commemorative of his bravery at Corunna, Talavera, 
Salamanca, Badajos, Pombal, and Busaco, in the 
Peninsula War. Unfortunately, being a soldier, he 
was unfitted for any other calling, and after his dis- 
charge, he found it hard to secure employment. 

2 



l8 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

That medal was good to look at, but it was harder 
than " hard tack " to bite. And $100 (the value of 
the pension) was a small sum with which to bridge 
the chasm of food and clothes and shelter for a twelve- 
month. 

Happily, the mother was a breadwinner, too, in a 
small way. For twenty years she taught the village 
school. The length of her service shows that she 
did it well. Mrs. Gough was well educated, con- 
sidering her position in life, had a kind heart, pos- 
sessed a gentle, affectionate disposition, and was 
withal an excellent disciplinarian. She won the 
hearts and commanded the wills of her pupils and of 
her children. 

John and Jane Gough were a devout couple; he a 
Methodist, she a Baptist ; though in the absence of a 
church of her own denomination in Sandgate, she 
habitually worshiped with her husband. She had 
lived in London, and while there united with Surrey 
Chapel, made famous by the ministry of Rowland 
Hill, and kept so by that of Newman Hall. It was 
that metropolitan experience, no doubt, which helped 
to win her the position of schoolmistress, for one 
who had been to "Lunnon" was stared at in those 
days; but an attendance at Surrey Chapel must have 
been a sorry preparation for the rude conventicle in 
Sandgate. However it may be, she never murmured, 
and, after the manner of her sex, put up with self- 
denial so that it was changed to coronation. 

This worthy couple decided to name their babe 
after the father, John. In order to avoid a junior, 
Bartholomew was added. So John B. started with 
an honest name and a stout pair of lungs. Until 



BESIDE THE CRADLE. 19 

seven years of age, his mother taught him at home. 
Then he trudged off to the neighboring and larger 
town of Folkestone, a mile and a half away, to a 
" seminary," where presently he became a teacher 
himself, if you please (this child), and, as he says, 
" initiated two classes into the mysteries of learning — 
one of them into the art of spelling words of two 
syllables, and the other into the knowledge of the 
Rule of Three." When ten years old he left school — 
his education finished! Or rather, he went out into 
that greatest of schools, the world, whose teacher is 
experience, whose text-books are hard knocks, and 
whose terms come high. 

As young Gough developed certain traits of the 
future man began to show themselves. Earliest of 
all, perhaps, his power of imitation. He had a sister, 
his junior by two years, and his constant playmate. 
She was a master-hand at dressing rag dolls. These 
he would often borrow, seat in stiff and starched pro- 
priety in front of a chair which he used for a pulpit, 
and then, with Bible and hymn-book on the seat, pro- 
ceed to exhort his dumb auditors — about as effectually 
as his clerical patterns sometimes do theirs of flesh 
and blood! When church was out, he would imagine 
it was Monday, and so pass to a Punch-and-Judy 
show. Standing in a bottomless chair, appropriately 
concealed himself, and reproducing the peculiar tones 
and antics of Punch and Judy, he both amused him- 
self and entertained the wandering rustics who gath- 
ered to see and hear. Thus, as Joseph Cook 
remarks, among his earliest playthings were a pulpit 
and a Punch-and-Judy box. They were among his 
last. 



20 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

Side by side with this mimetic gift, and as its vehi- 
cle John exhibited rare vocal powers. Ventriloquism 
was natural to him. He read superbly — was the 
show-reader of the town. And he earned many a 
sixpence in that way, and in recitations in the tap- 
room of the village. 

These were innate characteristics. They implied 
quick powers of observation, a sensitive, impression- 
able nature, and the ability (which Gough had pre- 
eminently) to translate feeling into exact expression. 



II. 



EARLY SCENES AND INCIDENTS. 

Sandgate was then, as it is now, a watering-place. 
People who desired to get away from " the madding 
crowd/' or who wished to inhale the tonic salt breezes, 
or to sport in the breakers, but whose tastes were 
quiet, or whose purses were slender, found there what 
they wanted. The houses were strung along a single 
street, back of which were hills which were gemmed 
here, there, and yonder, with more pretentious man- 
sions and grounds of the gentry. 

It was an historic neighborhood. Here stood the 
Castle of Sandgate, built by Henry VIII. in 1539, 
which had been honored by the presence of Queen 
Elizabeth half a century later. Near by were a dozen 
other castles, half ruinous, each with its legend. And 
not far away were Dover, with its cliffs, and Canter- 
bury, with its magnificent cathedral, and Folkestone, 
in whose High street stood the house where Harvey 
(who discovered the circulation of the blood) was 
born ; while away there across the straits loomed 
France, in plain sight on a fair day. Jane Gough 
before her marriage came hither to teach school. 
John Gough was stationed near by with his regi- 
ment. Here, therefore, they met, married, and set- 
tled. It was a happy selection of a residence for 



22 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

young John. He reveled in the diversified scenery 
and associations of the place, and found 

" . . . tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 

He haunted the Castle of Sandgate, whose keeper 
became his close friend. Speaking of it long after- 
wards, he says: " As I acquired some knowledge of 
Bluff King Hal, I would wander through the court- 
yards, the turrets, and the battlements, and build 
castles in the air, and, in fancy, people the place with 
its old inhabitants, and see plumed cavaliers and 
ruffled dames pacing the corridors, or surrounding 
the groaning board. Katherine of Aragon, Anne 
Boleyn, Katherine Seymour, and others, flitted before 
me; and, living in the past, almost unconsciously my 
imagination was cultured and my mind imbued with 
a love of history and poetry." ' 

The beach was another favorite haunt. The recep- 
tive and dreaming boy roamed up and down the 
sands, or sat in physical idleness but busy thought, 
watching the white-winged ships, listening to the 
moan of the sea — which, like himself, was subject to 
ever-changing moods. Once he saw an East-India- 
man wrecked on the shore before his very eyes, heard 
the shrieks of the passengers, seven hundred in num- 
ber, and gazed with horror upon their dead forms, 
rising, falling, rising again, on the white crests of the 
cruel waves, and finally washed up on the sands — a 



1 "Autobiography and Personal Recollections of John B. 
Gough," 1871, pp. 20, 21. 



EARLY SCENES AND INCIDENTS. 23 

sight which gave him nightmare-visions for weeks 
and months. 

The people of Sandgate were fishermen — and 
smugglers. The duties on silks, laces, teas, etc., were 
so high, the coast of France was so near, the passage 
across was so easy, the fishing boats were so conve- 
nient, the margin of profit attendant upon landing 
dutiable articles surreptitiously was so large, the love 
of adventure among these amphibious folk was so 
strong, the nights were so often temptingly dark, — 
that virtue yielded to such manifold temptation. The 
beach was patrolled day and night by men-of-war's- 
men, armed to the teeth, to prevent smuggling. 
Many were the struggles between these guards and 
the Sandgaters, with various results; although for 
the most part the smugglers, aided and abetted by 
the whole population, got the best of it. But the 
snap of gun-locks, the whiz of bullets, the hurrying of 
feet, and sometimes the presence of death as the 
result of these skirmishes, were common sights and 
sounds in those days. On a certain occasion, young 
Gough went with a comrade up an adjacent hill to 
kindle a beacon-light as a signal to some smugglers 
in the offing to run in their goods. The boys then 
ran in themselves — Gough into the arms of his angry 
father, whose hard-earned pension he had imperiled 
by his escapade, and who, therefore, soundly boxed 
his ears. 

The boy delighted in playing soldier with his father 
as captain. The elder Gough was nothing loath, 
and, with a broom for a gun, would drill the boy by 
the hour, and then end the lesson by telling stories 
of his campaigns. " Here," he would say, " was such 



24 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

a regiment; there such a battalion; in this situation 
was the enemy; and yonder was the position of the 
General with his staff." The boy listened, as boys 
will listen to such tales, and seemed to feel the excite- 
ment of the battlefield thrilling along his nerves, to 
smell the smoke of war, and to swell with the pride 
of victory. Thus he became at a tender age a veteran 
by brevet. 'Tis surprising that the rampant militar- 
ism of his surroundings — those outlying castles, the 
constant recurrence of the pett) r conflicts between the 
men-of-war's-men and the smugglers, and the object- 
lessons of his father, who " showed how fields were 
won," — did not impel young Gough to become a sol- 
dier. Probably nothing saved him but the feminine 
delicacy of his temperament, his dread of physical 
pain, and his early withdrawal from the scene. A 
soldier he did become, after all, though of a grander 
type — a moral hero, whose campaigns were as real 
as they were bloodless, and whose peaceful victories 
were " no less renowned than war." 

John was a fun-lover and a fun-maker from the 
start. Some of his practical jokes, however, brought 
him into trouble, one in particular, which he shall 
relate: " A dapper little man, a tailor by profession, 
attended the Methodist chapel, where my father wor- 
shiped; and his seat was directly in front of ours. 
He was a bit of a dandy, a little conceited, and rather 
proud of his personal appearance, but was a sad 
stammerer. He had what was called a ' scratch wig ' 
— a small affair that just covered the top of his head. 
One unlucky Sunday for me, as I was sitting in the 
chapel, with his head and wig right before me, I 
began playing with a pin, and having bent it to the 



EARLY SCENES AND INCIDENTS. 25 

form of a hook, found in my pocket a piece of string, 
tied it around the head of the pin, and began to fish, 
with no thought of any particular mischief, and doing 
what boys often do in church when they are not in- 
terested in or do not understand the service. So, 
with one eye on my father, who sat by me intently 
listening to the discourse, and one eye alternately on 
the minister and my fishing-line, I continued to drop 
my hook, and haul it up again very quietly — when, 
becoming tired of fishing, I gathered up the line, and 
resting the pin on my thumb, gave it a snap; up it 
went; I snapped it again and again very carefully, till 
one unfortunate snap sent the pin on Billy Bennett's 
head; it slid off. Then the feat was to see how often 
I could snap it on his head without detection. After 
several successful performances of this feat I snapped 
it a little too hard, and it rested on the ' scratch wig ' 
too far forward to fall off. So I must needs pull the 
string, and as my ill 'fortune would have it, the pin 
would not come; I drew it harder and harder, very 
cautiously, till it was tight. The pin caught some- 
where. Now, I knew if detected I should be severely 
punished. The temptation was so strong to pull off 
that wig that it seemed to me I must do it, my fingers 
itched; I began to tremble with excitement, I looked 
at my father. He saw nothing. All were attentively 
listening to the preacher. I must do it; so, looking 
straight at the minister, I gave one sharp, sudden jerk 
— off came the wig. I let go of the string; poor Billy 
sprang from his seat, and, clasping both hands to his 
head, cried, ' Goo — Goo — Good Lord! ' — to the aston- 
ishment of the congregation. But there in our pew 
lay the wig, with pin and string attached, as positive 



26 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

evidence against me. One look at my father's face 
convinced me that * I had done it ' and should ' catch 
it'; and 'catch it' I did. My father waited until 
Monday, and in the morning conducted me to Billy 
Bennett's and made me beg his pardon very humbly. 
Billy was good-natured, and actually tried to beg me 
off; but my father declared he would 'dust my jacket 
for me.' And he did; or at any rate would have 
dusted it most thoroughly, but he made me take it 
off — so that the jacket was none the better for the 
'dusting,' though my shoulders and back suffered 
some, and it served me right." ' This passage in 
John's life, like many another, illustrates the saying 
of the French philosopher, that " opportunity is the 
cleverest devil." 

Occasionally the boy was sent to mill with a bag 
of grain — red-letter days these were. The horse of a 
neighbor was borrowed for the nonce, a blind, lame, 
raw-boned animal. Mounting this Bucephalus, he 
would make the circuit of the village, win the admira- 
tion of the envious boys, then amble off to the mill, 
and, on returning, be laid up a couple of days to re- 
cover from the lameness caused by the joint action of 
the beast's case-knife backbone and cobble-stone trot. 

On returning from school in Folkestone one day, 
Gough received his death-blow, actually. He was 
playing stage-coach, and pretending to drive four 
spirited horses in the presence of four even more 
spirited boys. " Get up ! go long ! " and away they 
went, pell-mell. Just then the team and driver 
passed a laborer who was in the act of throwing up a 



1 " Autobiography and Personal Recollections, " pp. 38-40. 



EARLY SCENES AND INCIDENTS. 27 

spadeful of clay from a trench beside the road ; the 
sharp edge buried itself in the side of John's head. 
He fell, bathed in blood; remained unconscious for 
days, and was expected to die, or, if he lived, to lose 
his reason. Sad, anxious days they were in the cot- 
tage of John and Jane Gough. The boy was spared; 
but he never got over that blow. Fifty years after- 
wards he said: " To this day I feel the effects of it. 
When excited in speaking, I am frequently compelled 
to press my hands on my head to ease the pricking 
and darting sensation I experience." Eventually that 
same " pricking and darting sensation " struck him 
dead. 

Among the formative influences of Gough's child- 
hood we must certainly mention the annual fair, held 
towards the end of July, on the village green, directly 
opposite his home. The gaudy booths, the flaring- 
painted canvas, the gaping crowd — John himself 
among the gapers, we may be sure — the scene made 
an indelible impression upon the young mimic; and 
some of the characters he portrayed so graphically in 
after life he saw and absorbed in front of his own 
door-sill. He describes the sights and sounds — the 
mermaid, the pig-faced lady, and spotted boy from 
Bottlenose Bay, in the West Indies, the calf with two 
heads; the " ambiguous " cow that can't live on land, 
and dies in the water; the greatest saw you ever saw 
saw in all the days you ever saw; the swings, the 
merry-go-rounds, the climbing of the greased-pole, 
the donkey races (the slowest donkey to win, and no 
man rides his own donkey); the clowns, the harle- 
quins, the pantaloons, the columbines, the whole 
being spiced with the music of drums, fifes, penny- 



28 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

whistles, cat-calls, hurdy - gurdys, bagpipes — the 
dread of mothers and paradise of children. 1 

But events like these were only the dessert in the 
dinner of life; the chief part of the meal was com- 
posed of much less dainty and appetizing morsels, 
according to a boy's conception. John had his 
studies, his chores, his duties, in a word, which, like 
Banquo s ghost, would not " down " at his bidding. 
His temperamental tendency to day-dreaming, when 
he was not engaged in mischief, was measurably held 
in check by the prosaic demands made on his time 
and attention by school and work. The narrow 
means at home drove him early to help eke out the 
family resources. His main recourse for this purpose 
was Purday's library — the news center of the village. 
Here he made many a sixpence as an errand-boy, and, 
perhaps, quite as often as a show-reader. One day 
he earned five shillings and sixpence in this way. 
Rushing home with it to show his mother, he found 
her in tears. The larder was empty, the husband and 
father was absent seeking employment; the poor soul 
had walked that day to Dover and back (eight and a 
half miles each way), striving in vain to sell some 
lace, the work of her own deft hands, and now it was 
night — there she sat, tired out and hysterical. 

The eager boy made over his small fortune to his 
mother gladly, although this disposition of it spoiled 
his " Arabian Nights' " visions of a millionaire's posi- 
tion and expenditures, and, kneeling down with her, 
thanked God for the timely provision. Then Mrs 
Gough gave her son half a penny for himself. With 



1 M Autobiography," pp. 43-44. 



EARLY SCENES AND INCIDENTS. 2Q 

this he hurried across the street to the store of Mrs. 
Reynolds, and cried: "Now, Mrs. Reynolds, I want 
a farden's worth of crups (a kind of cake) and a 
farden back." The experiences of that memorable 
day, his half-crown piece, his willing gift of it to his 
mother, his contented exchange of it for the half- 
penny, and Mrs. Reynolds's " farden's worth of 
crups," with the " farden back," were stamped indeli- 
bly upon Mr. Gough's memory. He often told the 
story, and has given it a permanent record in his 
book of personal recollections. 

One summer, the celebrated and excellent William 
Wilberforce, who had made the emancipation of 
the slaves in the West Indies his life work, and who, 
as Lord Brougham said, " went to heaven with eight 
hundred thousand broken fetters in his hands," came 
down to Sandgate for an outing. The elder Gough 
took his son to a prayer-meeting held at the lodgings 
of the distinguished visitor. After the meeting, John 
was called upon to read something, which he did, 
winning the approbation of Wilberforce, who gave his 
praise tangible expression in the shape of a book, 
which he inscribed, and his blessing, which he laid 
upon the lad's bowed head. The book Gough lost. 
The blessing he kept. 



PART II. 

The Rmigrant 



" Farewell. 
For in that word — that fatal word — howe'er 
We promise — hope — believe, — there breathes 
despair." 

— Byron, The Corsair, Canto I. 



THE DEPARTURE FROM HOME. 

Poverty is only less cruel than sin. It was now 
about to force a boy of twelve away from his father's 
house and his mother's arms across the sea. For those 
situated as the Goughs were life was hard at best. The 
present held no comfort, the future no hope. Daily 
bread was a daily battle. Happily, this world-old and 
world-wide struggle teaches self-reliance, promotes 
diligence, necessitates economy, stirs enterprise, and 
is intended to build character. This is the real ex- 
planation of its existence in the order of divine 
Providence. Most of the strong-featured characters 
that have marked their own age and molded succeed- 
ing time have been disciplined in this stern school. 
" I thank God," said Edmund Burke, " that I was not 
coddled and dandled into being a legislator." Lincoln 
floated into the White House on a Mississippi flat- 
boat. And the heather is in the poems of Burns, 
because it was under his eyes while he held the plow 
in Ayrshire. But, however sweet the flower, the bud 
has a bitter taste. 

John Gough, Senior, had his pension. This was 
the raft under his feet — afloat, though always wet. 
John Gough, Junior, had nothing. Hq goulcl aspire 
3 



34 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

to nothing higher than the position of a gentleman's 
servant. Even a trade was beyond his reach, for that 
could be learned only by the payment of a premium. 
Many and anxious were the conversations between 
his father and mother regarding this matter. It all 
ended in an act of self-immolation on Jane Gough's 
part. Her boy was her life. She loved him so utterly 
that she consented to send him away to America 
with a family of neighbors who were about to immi- 
grate, and who ageeed. in consideration of ten 
guineas of the King's money, to teach him a trade 
and give him a home until he should come of age. 
She consented to this — not without an agonizing 
struggle with herself. But her son's welfare seemed 
to demand the sacrifice. A useful and honest life 
was promised beyond the Atlantic. The fact that 
her judgment and conscience conquered her heart is 
further proof of the strength and excellence of her 
character. A good mother is a true saint. 

John thought it was a lark — the realization, alas, 
came later, and made a lifelong tumult in his breast. 

On the 4th of June, then, in 1S29, behold him as he 
mounts the night-coach with his new guardians pre- 
paratory to setting out for London, whence the party 
expected to sail. The four shining horses paw the 
ground impatiently. The guard in scarlet livery lifts 
the bugle to his lips. The ostlers drop the bridles. 
The driver cracks his whip. They are off ! Presently, 
as they reach the bathing-houses on the sands half a 
mile away, John sees a crouching figure behind the 
hedge and recognizes his mother, who had hurried 
thither while the coach was being loaded in order to 
catch one last sight of the hope of her life. She had 



THE DEPARTURE FROM HOME. 35 

strained him to her heart, held him off at arm's 
length, and then clasped him again, times without 
number, ere he left the house. Now she caressed 
him with her eyes ! 

It was a night ride up to " Lunnon," this of which 
we speak. In the excitement of the journey, the boy 
soon forgot (forgot only to remember for ever) that 
heartbroken mother weeping beside the road. He 
had been on a mail-coach once before when eight 
years old, and had gone with a schoolmate, whose 
father was the driver, as far as Maidstone, half way to 
the metropolis. But that was four years ago — a cen- 
tury to a boy ; and now London was the destination ! 
How fast the horses went ! How their hoofs rang 
out on the hard road ! How proud John felt, perched 
up there on the top of the lumbering vehicle, as the 
women ran to the windows to look, until their eyes 
were blinded by the A ist. They made ten miles an 
hour. The horses were changed every seven miles. 
This was fast traveling in the year of grace 1829 — 
remember that, reader, spoiled by the experience of 
fifty miles an hour ; which, by-the-by, will, in its turn, 
be antiquated as the stage-coach jog when the electric 
railroads are perfected. At each relay there was a 
tavern where driver and guard took an " 'alf-an'-'alf " 
— and others, also, both male and female. Then the 
bugle blew, and the coach was off again. 

London was reached safely the next day. With all 
a rustic's curiosity, John gazed around him in open- 
mouthed wonder. What crowds, what endless lines 
of houses, what smart shops! Stop, here is a candy- 
shop. Where are those pennies? They were not 
plenty in his pocket in those days. All the free sights 



36 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

he took in during the tarry of four or five days in 
town. For the rest he was like the Peri in " Lalla 
Rookh," at the gate of Paradise — outside ! 

On the 10th of June they sailed in the good ship 
Helen. Off Sandgate the ship was becalmed — a joyful 
occurrence for the boy, already homesick, for his father 
came out in the afternoon ; and in the evening his 
mother and sister, spending more than they could 
afford in boat hire. These two had been absent from 
home in the afternoon and did not know of the Helen s 
presence in the offing until night fell. There was 
another sad leave-taking. As his loved ones dropped 
down the ship's side and floated away in the darkness 
John's heart sank. With a lump in his throat and 
tears in his eyes, he " turned in " and cried himself to 
sleep. The poor mother, we may be sure, did not 
sleep at alL During the night a breeze sprang up, 
and in the morning Sandgate was miles and miles 
astern. 

The strange experiences of the voyage filled the 
time and held the attention of the young emigrant, 
who proved to be an excellent sailor, and who, with 
the happy facility of boyhood, found in change and 
novelty an antidote for sorrow. The scrubbing of 
the deck, the shifting of the sails, the " yo hoy " of 
the seamen, the phosphorescent trail of the vessel, the 
flapping wings of the sea-gulls flying about the rig- 
ging and around the hull, the appearance of an 
occasional porpoise tumbling and rolling in the waves 
— were an endless source of amusement to this quick 
and sharp observer. 

He left many friends behind him in Sandgate. He 
soon made many new ones on shipboard, and became 



THE DEPARTURE FROM HOME. 37 

a general favorite. One of these sadly reduced his 
small capital. " I had," he tells us, " like other cap- 
italists, negotiated a loan with the black cook, to 
whom I advanced an English crown ; the principal 
and interest remain unpaid ; not an uncommon 
occurrence, I have been told since, in regard to foreign 
loans." 

In the gray dawn of August 3d land was sighted ; 
and soon everybody was on deck — all but poor John, 
who was kept busy below blacking the shoes of his 
master's family preparatory to landing, much to his 
disappointment, while the delighted comments of the 
company on deck, as the Hele7i sailed up the lovely 
bay, sounded in his ear. Thus he learned that he 
was no longer a petted boy at home, and that life 
meant disappointment. 

The people to whom he had been intrusted went 
ashore that afternoon. He remained on board the 
ship until the next day, when he, too, w T aved a good- 
bye to the friendly seamen and that insinuating cook, 
and set foot for the first time upon the soil of 
America. 



II. 



THE FARMER'S BOY. 

Gough's " master," to use the English term, re- 
mained in New York City two months, which were 
devoted by him to " prospecting," and by the lad to 
sightseeing, as opportunity offered. They then went 
to Utica, in New York State, where the Englishman 
bought a farm of about one hundred and fifty acres, 
which lay a few miles out of town, and whither the 
family removed. 

The journey up the Hudson river by steamboat to 
Albany, the diversified scenery, the jaunt on the 
canal-boat to Utica, and the wagon ride thence to 
the farm, — were all noted by the young traveler. His 
new home was on the frontier. For in 1829, the 
western march of civilization had scarcely reached 
central New York. There were settlements beyond 
that point, but they were few and far between. Hence 
life on the Oneida farm was like life in the Indian 
Territory to-day. Hard work, and plenty of it, was 
necessary in order to comb out the country. The 
boy from Sandgate became a drudge, " gee-hawing " 
the oxen, caring for the stock, hauling wood, driving 
the plow, running on errands, and enacting the role 
of Jack-general-utility. 

He did not like the American weather. One day it 



THE FARMER S BOY. 39 

was so warm that he worked in his shirt sleeves. The 
next there was a heavy fall of snow. Such sudden 
changes dazed him — as they have many others before 
and since. Indeed, our climate resembles Pope's 
description of Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, — 
" everything by starts, and nothing long." As the 
winter deepened, Gough's clothing proved insufficient. 
No matter, when he felt cold he warmed himself by 
extra exertions. When he came to explore his chest 
he found fresh evidences of his mother's love and 
care. She had pinned on almost every article a bit 
of paper containing some text of Scripture, written in 
her own dear penmanship. His Bible, too, was 
marked throughout, the second, third, fourth, and 
fifth chapters of Proverbs being especially over and 
under scored. 

As soon as the rough duties of his new life would 
permit, he wrote to his mother a long and remarkable 
letter, full of Goughiana, minutely describing the 
scenes and incidents of the emigration, and proving 
unconsciously to himself that he must have improved 
to the utmost those hours in school which abruptly 
ended when he was ten years old. The penmanship 
is good, the spelling immaculate, and the grammar 
and style worthy of a collegian. The gift of expres- 
sion was his by nature — the pen spoke, less graphi- 
cally but not less clearly than the tongue. We put 
in evidence a few extracts from one and another of 
his letters: 

"The farm is very comfortable, and has a dwelling-house, where 
we live, and a nice log-house. There are also a wood-house, 
a wagon and sleigh lodge, three hog-pens, a granary, a stable, 



40 JOHN B. GOT7GH. 

two barns, two cow-lodges — but master talks of having eighteen 
or twenty cows in the summer ; two horses, three fatting hogs, 
seven pigs, fifty she~p, a bull, and a calf. I like driving our 
team about. A team in this country is two horses. Our 
wagon is not so heavy as the English one. The horses are put 
in as you put them in a pair-horse coach." 1 

Later on he writes again: 

" I have enjoyed pretty good health since I have been here. 
I have learned a great many things. I can hold the plow, and 
thrash, and plant and hoe corn, plant potatoes, make cider, and 
do a great many things that I knew nothing of before. I was at 
the harrow with the oxen, when I heard there were some letters 
for me, and soon after Elizabeth brought a packet to me in the 
field. But I could not work any more all day for joy. I like 
the Yankees pretty well. They are open, free, and generous. 
They much use the word 'guess/ Thus, if they meant to say, 
• I shall go to chapel/ they would say, ' I guess I shall go to 
chapel/ Yesterday I went to camp-meeting, which is held once 
a year by different societies of Methodists. It is generally held 
in some of the woods. When we arrived at the entrance to the 
woods where this meeting was held, we heard a confused noise, 
but the first thing that struck our attention was a great number 
of tents or booths, such as are used at fairs. The next was 
the voice of prayer in even' direction. About fifteen engaged 
in prayer to God at the same time at different prayer-rings, 
which consisted of about fifteen or sixteen men and women 
met together, with a log to separate the males and the females. 

Mark the accurate observation and minute descrip- 
tion here. Plainly Gough was Gough even at the 
age of twelve. 

We subjoin one or two extracts from Mrs. Gough 's 



:obiography," p. 58. - "Autobiography," p. 60. 



THE FARMER S BOY. 41 

letters, which exhibit at once her intelligence, her 
piety, and her motherhood : 

" I wish, my clear, when you write again you would let me 
know if you have committed to memory any of the chapters I 
mentioned to you in the letter I put among your clothes. You 
will find them of great use to you ; more especially if you are 
employed in the fields, where, perhaps, you will be much alone. 
Then you will find it a pleasant and profitable employment 
for your thoughts to be able to repeat to yourself portions of 
the Word of God. I speak from experience, my dear. I have 
often passed pleasantly many an hour of hard work by repeat- 
ing to myself passages of Scripture committed to memory, and 
I can now remember those best that I learned before I was 
your age. 

" We long to know, my dear boy, how you got through the 
severe winter. It was very severe here ; but I suppose you 
will find the summer as hot as you have felt the winter cold." l 

Again : 

" I do assure you we all of us remember you with unabated 
affection; and the 9th of the month brings forcibly to my mind 
the time when I parted from you ; and I hope, if it be the 
Lord's will, that we shall meet again in this world, if our lives 
are spared. You have been gone now nearly two years, and 
the time will wear away. 

" Your father was pleased that you had taken time to write 
your last letter so well. He wishes you to practise your writ- 
ing whenever you have opportunity ; and also your ciphering, 
as it may be of great use to you in your future life. 

" I hope, my dear boy, you are earnestly seeking after the 
one thing needful. You know the Lord has said, • they that 
seek shall find.' It is, my dear boy, the earnest wish of both 
your parents that you may in early life be devoted to the Lord; 



1 "Autobiography," pp. 55, 56. 



42 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

that you may be His servant — serve Him — and so, my dear 
boy, keep close to your Bible." ■ 

Here a loving Christian mother's heart throbs in 
every word. Admonitions like these sometimes seem 
to be forgotten — they never are. Waywardness and 
sin may overlay them ; but, like that long-lost por- 
trait of Christ by the old Italian painter, done on the 
wall and covered by neglect and ignorance with 
whitewash, which was finally discovered and restored, 
the divine features drawn by a mother's hand in a 
child's consciousness will eventually reappear in 
undimmed beauty and with force unspent. 

At the end of his second year on the farm, John 
resolved, if possible, to leave it. He had two reasons 
for this. First, he was being dwarfed into a mere 
" hand/' There was neither time nor opportunity 
for schooling — not even for Sunday-school study ; 
and he knew and respected his parents' wishes on these 
points. Churches were infrequent, but he did attend 
one or another of them occasionally; and, indeed, 
in a revival, had united with the Methodists upon 
probation. Second, some one had told him that in 
New York City he could learn a trade without the pay- 
ment of a premium — the necessity in England which 
had driven him into exile. Filial feeling led him to 
write home for permission to make the change. 
Postage in those days was high, and he sold his pen- 
knife to buy the stamp. The consent came. Gough 
laid down the shovel and the hoe, picked the hayseed 
out of his hair, and started for Gotham. 



1 "Autobiography," p. 56. 



III. 

THE YOUNG BOOKBINDER. 

The English lad is now out of tutelage, and 
" Lord of himself — that heritage of woe ! " 

His parents are three thousand miles away. His 
recent guardians have been left behind up in Oneida 
County. He has just landed from the steamboat, and 
stands at the corner of Cortlandt street, in New York 
City with a baby trunk (plenty large enough to hold 
all his possessions) at his feet, fifty cents in his pocket, 
and fourteen years on his head. 

" Carry your trunk, sir ? " said a voice. 

He started, for he had been standing panic-stricken 
in the rush and roar of the human stream. 

" Carry my trunk," he repeated; and then asked 
himself — " where ?" He realized now the full mean- 
ing of solitude in the midst of multitudes — the drear- 
iest loneliness of all. 

Well, it would not do to be standing here in a brown 
study. Like " Poor Joe " in Dickens's story, he must 
be " movin' on." Some one directed him to a cheap 
hotel. There he lodged. Next, he was directed to 
seek work at the Methodist Book Concern, then in 
Crosby Street. He did so, and was engaged as errand- 



44 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

boy in the bookbindery, with the promise of being 
taught the business. What were the wages? They 
were S2.25 a week. How much did he pay for board ? 
He paid $2 a week. The magnificent sum of 25 cents 
w T as left for clothing and incidental expenses. 

He first boarded in William Street (long since 
wholly given up to business), and found that the land- 
lady had placed him in the same room and bed with 
a poor Irishman who shook all night with the fever 
and ague. The next day Gough asked for a separate 
bed. That night he slept on a "cat-tail" bed up 
under the rafters in the same room with the sick man, 
whose groans kept him awake, and who presently gave 
a gasp, a moan — and died. Poor Gough was fright- 
ened out of his five senses. He sat there with eyes as 
staring and mouth as much a-gape as the dead man's, 
until morning dawned, when by a mighty effort he 
overcame his catalepsy, rushed from the stifling den, 
and aroused the landlady. She was as composed as 
he was agitated — the man's board was paid! " This," 
remarked Mr. Gough, " was my first experience in a 
cheap boarding-house in Xew York, but not the last 
by any means. For lack of comfort, for want of all 
that makes life enjoyable, a cheap boarding-house 
stands preeminent." Here, beyond dispute, is the 
secret of much of the dissipation prevalent among 
men in great cities. The saloon is a-glitter with light, 
offers companionship, in attractive contrast with the 
dingy, six-by-nine lodging-house; and usually stands 
between the brothel and the theater, opening impar- 
tially into both. 

For a time, however, Gough escaped these pitfalls. 
As he worked that day he began to cry — the scene of 



THE YOUNG BOOKBINDER. 45 

the night before, his lack of sleep, and a sense of his 
forlorn situation flooded his heart with woe. A young 
woman near by saw and pitied him, learned his story, 
and said: 

" Poor, distressed child, you shall go home with 
me." He did so. Her mother received him most 
kindly; he had a mother and a sister once more. 
Unhappily, he did not remain long with these good 
Samaritans. He went from them to board with Mr. 
Anson Willis, his class-leader in the church which he 
attended. The future looked bright. His new 
friends were interested in him, and, indeed, proposed 
to educate him for the ministry. He wrote to inform 
his parents of these prospects, and received their glad 
sanction. For some reason, the educational project 
fell through, Gough left the church, quitted the Book 
Concern, and changed his boarding-place — a social 
revolution. This passage in his life he treats in his 
" Autobiography " with reticence, and obscures it by 
a reference to " circumstances." In so far as his 
immediate future was concerned these " circum- 
stances " were most unfortunate; although the 

" . . . divinity that shapes our ends 
Rough-hew them how we will " 

meant from the evil to educe a compensating good. 

With the improvement in his condition, the tugging 
at his heart towards home increased. As he could 
not go there, why not bring home here? He wrote 
urging his parents to leave Sandgate for New York. 
The father, unwilling to lose his pension, remained in 
England in order to arrange for acommutation, hoping 



46 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

to follow later, and meantime sent his wife and 
daughter on ahead in response to this appeal. 

John was now sixteen, had learned his trade, was 
earning $3 a week, and felt quite a man. When his 
mother and sister arrived, he met them, received their 
compliments upon his appearance, responded to their 
affectionate caresses, and, the three went off to set up 
that home of which John had been dreaming. It was 
lowly — but it was theirs ! The meals were frugal — 
but they were prepared by mother! They all thought 
the three rooms in which they kept house quite palatial, 
the three cups and saucers a grand show, and the 
shabby furniture good enough for anybody. 

"Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home." 



IV. 



THE PAUPER FUNERAL. 



Mrs. Gough and her daughter had reached New 
York in August, 1833. The weeks and months which 
followed were like so many pages out of a fairy-story, 
when, in November of the same year, the dream burst, 
and fairyland was exchanged for prosaic privation. 
Hard times came on ; snap, snap, went the cords of 
business. Firm after firm failed. John lost his place. 
His sister, who had secured work as a straw-bonnet 
maker, lost hers. The breadwinners were both idle. 
The Goughs retrenched by giving up two of their 
rooms, and thus reduced their rent from $1.50 to 50 
cents a week. But, where was this to come from? 
And how about food, and fire, and clothing? 

The battle for bread which they had found desper- 
ate enough in England, proved to be even more des- 
perate in America. The winter seemed interminable. 
One by one the pieces of furniture were disposed of — 
eaten up. One by one their articles of wearing 
apparel were carried to the pawnshop. John roamed 
the streets in search of something, anything to do; 
sometimes succeeding, more often failing to get even 
a light job. Mrs. Gough and her two children went 
hungry to bed, rose hungry in the morning, remained 
hungry through the day, as an habitual experience. 



48 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

The agony of it who can tell, save those who know! 
These were moments when meek-eyed patience folded 
her hands in despair. 

Self-respect kept the Goughs through that dread- 
ful winter from applying to the poor-fund of the city 
for relief. The worthy poor have to be sought — they 
seldom seek. There was then no organized charity; 
charity was individual and sporadic. Moreover, these 
people were unsophisticated, strangers in a strange 
land, human chips on the Niagara rapids of a great 
city, and unskilled in the wretched art of self-asser- 
tion. Had they been less worthy and more brazen, 
they had fared better in a world which often gives 
from a motive no higher than to " get rid" of a 
beggar. 

As the wintry days brightened into spring and then 
warmed into summer, these privations continued. 
The necessaries of life were precariously gotten and 
enjoyed. The boy and girl bore it better than might 
have been expected. They had youth on their side 
and health. Nor were they haunted by memory, nor 
racked by anticipation. Mrs. Gough grew thinner 
and thinner. She became so weak that she could 
hardly drag herself about the garret. But for the 
children's sake she forced a semblance of cheerfulness 
to her face. The daily portion of Scripture was 
unfailingly read. A blessing was asked on every 
starvling meal. Like Milton, when poor and broken 
and blind, she " bated no jot of heart or hope," but 
submitted with the unmurmuring resignation of a 
Christian. 

It was the 8th of July, 1834. The day was hot. 
Late in the afternoon John went off to bathe in the 



THE PAUPER FUNERAL. 49 

East River. He was in unusually good spirits, and 
sported in the water like a fish, while his companions 
laughed merrily at his antics. At eight o'clock he 
returned home, reinvigorated by his bath, and leaped 
up the stairs two steps at a time, whistling. His 
sister met him at the door of their room, and exploded 
in his ear the bombshell announcement: 

" John, mother's dead! " 

At first he was stunned — then he became hysterical. 
As soon as he could command himself he went in. 
There she lay — dear, dear mother — her eyes closed, 
a handkerchief around her head and chin, — so cold, so 
still, yet so sweet and beautiful to look at — not like the 
staring-eyed and open-mouthed dead Irishman in that 
other garret, three years before! The boy's genius for 
observation enabled him to grasp these details at a 
glance. Then a tempest of sorrow beat within his 
heart. Meantime, he sat there beside the unre- 
sponsive form, as calm himself, physically, as the 
dead. He took the passive hand in his palm, and 
held it until it seemed, as in life, to give him pressure 
for pressure. Thus he sat all night, thinking, think- 
ing, devoid of fear and frozen with grief. He recalled 
his mother's love and care — her life of hardship — her 
meek and holy fortitude, and felt almost glad to 
know that she was now in heaven, where such as she 
belonged. 

At break of day, a wild mood seized him. He rushed 
from the house. "Mother is not dead," he said to 
himself; " she shall not die! " Then the reality of it 
shook him like an aspen leaf. He wandered down to 
the river. There he sat thinking, — ever thinking, 
taking no note of time. By-and-by he went home. 
4 



50 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

They told him his sister had been cared for by neigh- 
bors on the floor below; told him, too, how his 
mother had been found by some one who passed the 
open door of their room, stretched lifeless upon the 
floor, where she had fallen, struck down by apoplexy 
while in the act of preparing his supper, which was 
found burned to a crisp in the saucepan on the stove 
— her last thought and effort expended for him! 

Entering the room once more, John learned further 
that a coroner's inquest had been held, and that 
orders had been left to bury the body before the 
next day noon. But how? Where? He plunged 
into the streets again. On, on he went, anywhere, 
nowhere, without a purpose save to keep in motion. 

Involuntarily he drifted back to the house, and dis- 
covered that the city had sent a cart, a pine box, and 
two men, and that the precious dust had just started 
for the Potter's Field. Hastening with his sister after 
the vehicle, which was soon overtaken, the two 
" mitherless bairns " followed on to the grave. This 
dear saint had been tumbled into the pine box, with 
her shoes on her feet, without a prayer, without the 
reading of the Scriptures she loved, and was now 
dumped in a shallow trench, which was hastily refilled 
—all was over. Such was the pauper funeral of poor 
Jane Gough! 

This experience made a practical atheist of Gough 
for many years, and paved the way for his moral 
downfall. " If there were a God (so he reasoned), 
would He neglect His children ? Did my mother 
ever desert me ? Was not she a saint ? See where 
she lies now — in the Potter's Field!" Having thus 
stabbed Providence with interrogation points, and 



THE PAUPER FUNERAL. 51 

put over him an exclamation mark tor a tombstone, 
he proceeds to rail at the Church and at ministers. 
" Mother was a consistent Church member, yet she 
died unsuccored, and was carried to a pauper's grave 
without a prayer ! " 

We do not quote his words. But these bitter feel- 
ings were locked-up in his heart as he turned over 
these mysteries which have perplexed profounder 
mindb that his, and which have been discussed end- 
lessly since they were mooted in the days of Job 
under the tents of the Idumean Emirs. Happily, 
deeper views of the creation, a wider knowledge of 
human nature, a juster conception of Providence, and 
a better understanding of death — of the release and 
reward it brings to the righteous — eventually brought 
him back to his mother's Bible and his mother's 
God. 

As it regards Gough himself, this pathetic passage 
in his life by-and-by softened his heart, made him 
infinitely pitiful, and gave him for the poor and 
miserable a sympathy which enabled him to speak 
for them and to them with redemptive power, and 
with the persuasiveness of personal fellowship. 

Moreover, his early poverty allied him with some 
of the greatest of men. What did Dante owe to 
Florence but exile, confiscation, and persecution ? 
Lord Bacon is said to have been reduced to beg a 
mug of beer in his old age — and to beg in vain. 
Otway was choked to death by a morsel of bread 
swallowed too ravenously after a long fast. Johnson, 
after the publication of his dictionary, was released 
by his publishers from the debtor's prison. Gold- 
smith, more than once, took refuge from actual 



52 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

starvation among the beggars of London. Nay, the 
Divine Nazarene Himself was so poor that He " had 
not where to lay His head." 

This boy of sixteen was thus far in good com- 
pany. 



PART III. 

The Inferno 



" O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou 
hast no other name to be known by, 
let us call thee — devil !" 
— Shakespeare, Othello, Act II. Sc. 3. 



I. 



ADRIFT. 



Upon returning from the funeral of their mother 
to the garret, where she died, and which had 
been their home, John and his sister seated them- 
selves in utter desolation. They would not, could 
not remain where the associations were so sad. 
The few articles which had stood by them in their 
poverty until now, were now numbered among the 
assets of the pawnbroker, and with the pitiful pro- 
ceeds the children changed their abode and paid for 
new lodgings a month in advance — for the credit of 
homeless orphans is seldom good ! Then John, 
weakened by sleeplessness and long abstinence (he 
had eaten nothing since his mother's death), was 
taken seriously ill, and required medical attendance, 
which the city furnished. When convalescent, he 
went to the Oneida County farm to visit the people 
with whom he had emigrated ; his sister going to 
board near a place in town where she had at last 
secured work. After an outing of several months, he 
returned to New York and went into the bookbindery 
of John Gladding. Two years and more ticked 
themselves away, month by month, week by week, 
day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, second 
by second, into eternity. How did the young book- 



56 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

binder spend the time? Recklessly ! He joined one 
of those volunteer fire-engine companies which were 
a feature of New York fifty years ago — trap-doors of 
perdition, too. This was a first downward step. He 
made the acquaintance of a fast set. This was a 
second step downward. He soon began to frequent 
questionable resorts. This was a third step in his 
moral descent. Low he went, and ever lower, slowly, 
surely; illustrating in real life the scenes which 
Hogarth has immortalized in his cartoons of "The 
Rake's Progress." 

Talent is to a man what beauty is to a woman — 
ofttimes a fatal gift. Gough sang finely, especially 
in the comic vein. He was a natural actor. Story- 
telling was his forte. Add to all, a social disposition; 
and 'tis easy to understand why the young fellow 
should have been the center and charm of those loose 
circles. 

In such companionship drinking was a matter of 
course — and excessive drinking. Gough's tempera- 
ment was intense. Whatever he did was done to the 
full extent — whether it was work or play, folly or 
repentance. He was also excessively nervous; and a 
single social glass would set his brain aglow and 
inspire his genius. This his friends knew. Hence 
they would give him a " starter," and off he dashed 
like a racer at the word " go ! " 

Story ever old and ever new! Wretched delusion, 
to imagine that happiness is to be enjoyed by indulg- 
ing instead of in controlling appetite! 

Nevertheless, Gough is more deserving of pity than 
of blame. Think of his youth — of his exposure — of 
his sordid lodgings — of his isolation — of his peculiar 



ADRIFT. 57 

constitution. Had his mother lived she would have 
supplied him with what he lacked, a home, the over- 
sight and restraint of parental affection and religious 
guidance. In losing her when and as he did, he lost 
God, the Bible, the Church, every wholesome influ- 
ence. 

One morning in the late winter of 1837, while at 
breakfast in a Grand street boarding-house, he was 
told that there was a fire down the street. He had 
been out late the night before, and was surly, as 
young men are with nerves on edge after a carousal. 

" Let it burn, it wont hurt me." 

It did, though, for it was the bookbindery of Mr. 
Gladding that was on fire. He was out of work 
again. Not long, this time, but his " boss " went to 
Bristol, Rhode Island, and as he wanted John to go 
with him, the young man was burned out of New York 
and into New England. 



II. 



Mi THE STAGE. 



In Bristol, Gough changed the scene but not him- 
self. Bad always tends to worse. His drinking habits 
grew stronger, and his companionships more dubious. 
Within a twelvemonth Mr. Gladding failed. John 
(rent to Providence. Being an excellent workman, 
he easily found employment. The trouble was not 
to get it but to keep it. His new employer liked him. 
All that he needed was steadiness. Before he became 
familiar with his new surroundings, a theatrical com- 
pany billed the town. Gough sought their acquaint- 
ance. They praised his singing, admired his acting, 
and laughed at his stories. 

" Say, young man, why don't you go on the stage?" 
said one of these Thesbians. 

This question pleased his vanity. An actor — why 
not? 

His mother had taught him to look with horror 
upon the theater. F;r years he never passed one 
without a shudder N : m he had become a confirmed 
p. ay-goer; another proof that 

" Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, 
As to be hated, needs but to be seen; 
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
We first endure, then pity, then embrace," 



ON THE STAGE. 59 

The theater to-day is prurient enough. His- 
trionic geniuses, like Edwin Booth and Charlotte 
Cushman, have striven in vain to purify it. From the 
same stage the serious face of Hamlet and the half- 
nude form of the shameless danseuse have been 
exhibited. Hyperion here, a satyr there. Sensuality 
claims and dominates the boards. The plays that 
draw the best and pay the most are of the type of the 
" Black Crook" — moral monstrosities. It sometimes 
seems as though the days of Congreve and Wycherly 
had come again. The license of Charles the Second's 
time, when the loosest verses were put into the 
mouths of women; when hard-hearted and swagger- 
ing licentiousness prevailed; when every wife was 
represented as a bawd and every husband as a dupe; 
when Shakespeare's Viola was changed into a pro- 
curess, and Moliere's misanthrope became a ravisher; 
when vice was the fashion and virtue a joke, — these 
gross indecencies of the restoration disfigure the last 
decade of the nineteenth century. We badly need 
another Jeremy Collier. 

Not long before his death, the late Edwin Booth 
wrote to a stage-struck young friend well-placed in 
life as follows: 

" I have known many who, like you, gave up home, friends, 
and a respectable position for the glitter of the actor's calling, 
and who now are fixed for life in subordinate positions unworthy 
their breeding, education, and natural refinement. I beg you, 
as your friend and sincere well-wisher, to abandon the mistaken 
resolve, and enjoy the drama as a spectator, which pleasure as 
an actor you will never know, and retain the family, friends, and 
happy home that now are yours. Had nature fitted me for any 
other calling, I should never have chosen the stage ; were I 



60 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

able to employ my thoughts and labor in any other field, I 
would gladly turn my back on the theater for ever. An art 
whose professors and followers should be of the very highest 
culture is the mere makeshift of every speculator and boor 
that can hire a theater, or get hold of some sensational rubbish 
to gull the public. I am not very much in love with my calling 
as it now is (and, I fear, will ever be); therefore you see how 
loath I am to encourage any to adopt it. I know you will take 
my advice, as it is meant, in sincere kindness, and believe that 
my only wish is to spare you the sorrow that must follow the 
course you would pursue." 

When young Gough became an actor things were 
even worse. The theater was an outlaw. No preten- 
sions were made to decency. When the plays were 
not frivolous, they were dissolute. Coarse vice dis- 
ported on the stage, and drunkenness hiccoughed in 
the green-room. A worse environment for a young 
man with habits already bad could not be found. 

Gough soon showed the effects of his new way of 
life. He drank more, swore more, gambled more 
than ever. The line of characters he portrayed was 
the lowest of the low — profligate buffoons. A certain 
success attended his representations, for he had in 
unusual measure the talent required. Nor was he 
quite a novice. Before leaving New York he had 
sung successfully in the old Chatham street theater, 
under the assumed name of Gilbert— a last tribute to 
his past; for now, quite shameless, he acted under his 
own name. 

The players in Providence soon ended their season 
in bankruptcy. Gough got nothing for his service. 
Out-at-the-elbow, down-at-the-heel, his eyes red, his 
face bloated, he was thrown penniless upon the 



ON THE STAGE. 6l 

streets. From Rhode Island he wandered to Boston. 
Here he played in a drama entitled, " The Temper- 
ance Hoax," concocted to lampoon the cause after- 
wards so dear to him, in which the coarsest fun was 
poked at Dr. Lyman Beecher and Deacon Moses 
Grant, two of his best friends in the near future. 
Again the season ended in financial loss. Again he 
was out of employment and unpaid. 

Years afterwards, when the now bankrupt young 
actor was mature and disillusionized, he thus throws 
a flash-light back upon these experiences: 

" I shall never forget the sensation on my first visit to the 
theater. It was the Old Bowery. The play was ' The Apos- 
tate' — Mr. Booth, the elder, as Pescara; Mr. Hamblin, the 
manager, as Hemeya ; and Miss Vincent as Florinda. The 
afterpiece was 'The Review; or, The Wags of Windsor" — 
Mr. Booth as John Lump ; Mr. Hamblin as Looney McTwol- 
ter. Between the tragedy and the farce I cried and laughed. 
I was thrilled by the tragedy, and convulsed by the farce. 
It was a new world. How beautiful were the women! 
how noble were the men ! Even Pescara, as his eyes 
flashed with malignant hate, was like a creature above the 
mere human. The gorgeous dresses, the music and lights 
dazzled me. I went home to my lodgings fascinated, carried 
out of myself. How mean and poor was my little bed- 
room, and what a dreary monotony of life mine was, plodding 
in a shop to learn a trade! Trade, profession, occupation, busi- 
ness — all w r as tame, slow, groveling, compared with the glori- 
ous, the grand, the bewildering pursuit of the actor. Again 
and again I enjoyed the delicious enchantment, and fully de- 
termined that I must be an actor — I must strut my hour upon 
the stage. I envied the poor stick who came on to remove 
the tables and chairs — the poor, despised supe ; even the door- 
keeper was an object of interest. Yes, I was smitten. 

With what awe and reverence would we stage-struck boys 



62 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

watch some celebrated actor in the streets. It was an event 
worth recording. ' I saw Forrest to-day.' ' I saw Booth to- 
day.' I have even followed them and set my foot on the same 
stones they had trodden. Remember I was but sixteen years 
of age. These boys had each his favorite actress, for whom he 
would fight, aye, and throw down the gantlet to all comers 
in her defense. How we would crowd around the stage-door 
to see some actor or actress pass in or out! Madame Celeste 
was a great favorite ; we were never weary of singing her 
praises or seeing her performance. I should hesitate to say 
how many times I had seen her in ' The French Spy.' 

"All this led me to neglect the duty that lay before me. I 
eagerly devoured any plays that I could lay hold of — learned 
parts. I could repeat and spout Jaffier in ' Venice Preserved.' 
From tragedy to comedy, from farce to melodrama ; I even 
contemplated writing a play. I have carried a play-book sur- 
reptitiously to my work-bench, and learned the whole play 
while at my work, and then would mouth it and tear it in 
pieces in the most extravagant theatrical style." ■ 

In speaking of the engagement in Boston, which 
ended his theatrical career, he says: 

" I had now been regularly engaged on the staff of artists in 
a regular theater. Surely, I was at the summit of my ambi- 
tion. Before it had been an occasional appearance to fill up a 
gap at a temporary place of entertainment. Alas! I found 
the gold to be tinsel. Here I acquired a thorough distaste for 
all theatrical representations, and all the genius and intellect 
displayed by the most famous actor has not, and never can, 
reconcile me to the sham, the tinsel crowns, the pasteboard 
goblets, the tin armor, the paltry spangles, cotton for velvet, 
all make-believe, the combats, and the sham blood. Even the 
nightly disguise became an annoyance ; the painting the face, 
corking the eyebrows, penciling the wrinkles, the doing up with 



M Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 527, 528. 



ON THE STAGE. 63 

false whiskers, hair, mustache, the French chalk, the rouge, 
the burnt cork, to say nothing of the habiliments, rendered the 
whole thing at the last odious to me ; and I never felt meaner, 
or had less self-respect, than when I was bedizened to do some 
character. How men of ability and common sense can submit 
to this caricaturing night after night, passes my poor compre- 
hension. 

" In the theater I found some men of education in the higher 
walks of the profession ; but, oh ! the disenchantment ! The 
beautiful women were, some of them, coarse and profane; the 
noble gentlemen often mean, tricky, and sponging. In fact, the 
unreality of it, the terrible temptation to the lower forms of 
vice, especially to those of the nervous, excitable temperament, 
increased by the falsehood and fiction involved in their pro- 
fession, in seeming to be what they never were or could be, 
studying virtue to represent it on the stage, while their lives 
were wholly vicious, repelled me. Mark me well, I do not say 
this of all actors. I only speak of the special temptations of 
this special profession." ' 

In looking back, he affirms that even then he was 
glad he failed in that vocation — that the way was 
closed, and marked, " No thoroughfare." God did 
not mean Gough to wear the mask of Momus on the 
mimic stage. He was to act a more real part in a 
nobler drama. 



1 " Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 529, 530. 



III. 



THE ADVENTURES OF A DRUNKARD. 

Although he had the appearance of a hard drinker, 
Gough had been able to persuade himself until now 
that he was not a drunkard. Conscience accused him 
of it; but he played the special pleader in the court 
of his mind and cozened the jury into bringing in a 
verdict of acquittal. After his failure on the stage, 
he went back to his trade. He was soon dismissed 
on the avowed ground that he was a drunkard! 

A disagreeable truth is resented. Gough was 
angry. He kept sober for a whole week in order to 
show himself that he did not deserve the opprobrious 
title. The next week he was drunk from Monday 
morning until Saturday night in celebration of his 
sobriety! Upon recovering from this debauch, 
poorer and shabbier than ever, he heard that a book- 
binder was wanted in Newburyport, Mass., and that 
$6 a week might be earned there. He went to New- 
buryport, in January, 1838, got the job, and remained 
sober for an unwonted interval. Then trade fell off, 
and he shipped on a fishing-smack for a voyage to 
Chaleur Bay. The captain carried no liquor; so that 
Gough was temperate on ship-board by compulsion. 
Every time the vessel touched along shore, however, 
he went on a spree. On one such occasion he lay 



THE ADVENTURES OF A DRUNKARD. 65 

drunk at the bottom of the yawl as it was rowed back 
in the darkness to the vessel at anchor a mile away. 
She was reached. The oarsmen scrambled aboard, 
not missing him. The yawl was then hauled on deck 
by the prow. The first jerk threw the poor drunkard 
against the stern. The blow aroused him. He cried 
out, and was caught just as he was about to be 
dumped into the sea. This narrow escape he treated 
as a good joke. The next time he went ashore he 
treated his rescuers, and got drunk again in their 
company. 

Off Cape Sable, as the fishermen were homeward 
bound, they ran into a terrific storm. The rough sea- 
faring men did not expect to weather it. Crash went 
the masts. Another crash, the deck was broken in. 
Gough, made callous by dissipation, and calm in the 
midst of storm, occupied himself in taking mental 
kodak pictures of the scene — the tossing vessel, the 
shrieking wind, the upheaving waves, the frightened 
sailors. After a wild day or two, they ran into Sher- 
burne Bay, Nova Scotia, for repairs; and sailed thence 
for home, which they reached without further adven- 
ture. 

Gough describes one incident of this storm in a 
manner so characteristic that we quote it: 

" We had a man on board so notoriously wicked that we 
called him the Algerine. His habitual profanity was frightful. 
Utterly ignorant, all he knew of prayer or Scripture, was the 
first verse of the first chapter of Genesis, and the first clause of 
the Lord's prayer. During fair weather, he was a great brag- 
gart and bully ; when the gale so increased that we were really 
in danger, he began to show signs of fear ; and soon we heard 
him muttering — ' In the beginning God created the heaven and 

5 



66 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

the earth — oh ! — oh ! — Our Father shart in heaven — oh ! we're 
going clown — oh ! d the luck — In the beginning — oh ! mur- 
der — d the luck — Our Father shart in heaven.' When the 

jib blew away he was ordered by the captain to go out with 
another sailor on the bowsprit. ' No, I wont — Our Father shart 

in heaven — no — I wont — d d if I do/ — and there poor Jake 

lay prone on the deck. ' Get up, you lubber ! ' roared the 
captain. ' Our Father shart in heaven ' — continued Jake. 
' You need to be started with a rope's end,' said the captain. 
■ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth' — 
'You fool! get up ! you'll be washed overboard,' said the cap- 
tain. ' Oh ! oh ! — Our Father shart in heaven,' said Jake as he 
crawled to one of the rings by the hatchway, and clung to it 
with both hands. Poor Jake ! I think I see him now, as, in 
spite of the tremendous sea and our personal danger, we could 
but laugh. Utterly powerless with terror, all we could get out 
of him was — 'In the beginning' — or, 'Our Father shart in 

heaven ' — with an occasional 'd the luck,' interspersed with 

the most dismal ohs and groans. And so it was till the storm 
abated. When we were safe in Sherburne harbor, seated at a 
table with coffee and doughnuts, one of the men said : ' Jake, 
what was that about your Father?' another: 'Jake, tell us 
what was it in the beginning? ' and the chaffing commenced 
and continued, till he was almost beside himself with rage, and 
so threatened us that we thought it advisable to let him alone. 
But the slightest allusion to Jake's * Father ' or ' the beginning ' 
was sufficient to put him in a fury of passion ever after- 
wards." 1 

When a man is a fool in one way he may be safely 
relied upon to prove himself a fool in various other 
ways. At this time Gough married! He could al- 
most support himself; probably he thought it would 
be a poor woman who could not help a little. The 



"Autobiography," pp. 88-89. 



THE ADVENTURES OF A DRUNKARD. 67 

singular part of it is that any woman should have 
taken the same view. " Why arc you women such 
fools?" asked Napoleon of Madame de Stael. "I sup- 
pose, sire," replied she, " that God made us to match 
the men." Gough's wife, poor thing, paid dearly for 
her folly. Perhaps she married him to reform him. 
If she did, she soon realized her error. She did not 
lift him up; instead, he dragged her down — not into 
drunkenness; that last disgrace was spared both of 
them, — but into poverty and wretchedness. 

" Of all sad words of tongue or pen, 
The saddest are these — it might have been." 

This marriage " might have been " happy. But in 
order to that there was need of what Gough at the 
time lacked, stability, sobriety ; in one word, char- 
acter. Instead of altering his habits, he drank more, 
if possible, neglected his home for his former evil 
associates, and was habitually out of work. His 
divinity was not his wife, but the bottle. 

Soon his very associates grew ashamed of him. 
They cut him in the street. The men who had 
hounded him on along the road to ruin, now that he 
had reached that destination, turned from him with a 
curse. He became cheap in the estimation of the 
" respectable " revelers, who wore good clothes and 
held any social position. " Here comes that drunk- 
ard," they would say ; and then pass him without a 
nod. These were men about town who had not long 
before laughed loudest at his drolleries and applauded 
his recitations. 

Drunkard though he was, he was cut to the quick. 



68 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

For it is a mistake to imagine that even the lowest of 
the low is destitute of feeling or indifferent to social 
outlawry. Gough has himself said, in referring to 
this period in his career : " To speak of a drunkard's 
pride seems absurd ; and yet drink does not destroy 
pride and the desire for better things. The sting of 
his misery is that he has ambition, but no expecta- 
tion ; pride, but no energy. Therefore, the posses- 
sion of these very qualities is an addition to his load 
of agony. Could he utterly forget his manhood, and 
wallow with the beasts that perish, he would be com- 
paratively happy. But his curse is that he thinks. 
He is a man, and must think. He cannot always 
drown thought or memory. He may, and does, fly 
for false solace to the drink, and so stun his enemy 
in the evening ; but it will rend him like a giant in 
the morning. A flower, a half-remembered tune, a 
child's laughter, will sometimes suffice to flood the 
victim with recollections that either madden him to 
excess, or send him crouching to his miserable room, 
to sit with his face buried in his hands, while the hot, 
thin tears trickle over his swolLen fingers." 1 

A self-respecting employer feels pride in his em- 
ployes. Who wants a sot in his workroom ? Gough 
could 'not get work. As he stood drinking at one of 
the Newburyport bars he confided his situation to the 
rumseller who had served him. 

" Why don't you start a bindery of your own ? " he 
asked. 

Gough laughed, surveyed his rags, and said: 

" If I can't get work, how can I get credit ? " 



1 M Autobiography," p. 117, sq* 



THE ADVENTURES OF A DRUNKARD. 69 

" Well, Gough, I'll furnish the tools, and you can 
pay me in installments." 

The offer was accepted. The tools were supplied. 
The bindery was opened. He was much impressed 
by this act of kindness. 

" People say liquor-dealers have no heart. See 
what this man has done — when no one else would 
lend me a helping hand! " Thus he thought. He 
actually kept sober long enough to repay the debt. 
Presently, however, his opinion was modified when 
he learned that his " friend " had secured the tools on 
credit, taken the money for them from him, never 
settled for them, and left him to be dunned for double 
payment! 

How can a man who will not keep sober enough to 
work for others successfully manage a business for 
himself ? Gough's venture ended, as it was sure to 
do, in failure. When he should have been in his 
bindery, he was in a grog-shop. Books that were 
promised were not delivered. Patronage ceased. 
The shop was closed. 

The unhappy man was now constantly under the 
influence of liquor. He kept it in the house, drank 
every little while, until his brain was always in a 
dizzy whirl, and his hands trembled so that they lost 
the power to work at a trade requiring delicacy of 
manipulation, as bookbinding did. 

In desperate straits, he joined himself to a strolling 
company of minstrels, and set out on a local concert 
tour. In one of those proverbs which concentrate the 
wisdom of ages, we are told that " a rolling stone 
gathers no moss. ,, Gough's musical peregrinations 
brought him more applause than money. But, like 



JO JOHN B. GOUGH. 

the " Wandering Jew," he was in motion — which he 
craved. 

Rum revolutionized the nature of this young man. 
He was naturally religious — he dethroned the Lord 
in his irreverent thought, and seated whiskey " as 
God in the temple oi God." He was naturally affec- 
tionate — he withdrew his heart from his wife and 
gave it to drink. He was naturally truthful — he lied 
without scruple to get liquor. He was naturally 
frank and open — he became a sneak under the 
influence of the bottle, and dodged down alleys and 
skulked under the shadows when searching for a 
dram. The fatal vice emphasized every weakness 
and paralyzed every strength. Generosity became 
meanness. And, like Milton's Satan, he seemed to 
say: " Evil, be thou my good ! " 

All this to tickle a little spot in the throat not an 
inch wide. " Oh, that men should put an enemy 
in their mouths to steal awav their brains ! " 



IV. 



DELIRIUM TREMENS. 



Since his separation from his sister in the autumn 
of 1834, soon after their mother's death, Gough had 
not lived with her. She was now married, and 
resided in Providence, Rhode Island. One day he 
received a letter from her in which she told him she 
was ill, and requested him to send his wife to her for 
awhile. He consented — a welcome respite to her, no 
doubt. 

Having seen her off, he returned to his home. Her 
absence depressed him. A house without a wife in it 
is like a body from which the soul is gone. He sat 
down promising himself that he would go to work in 
earnest. It was in the morning. Soon he espied a 
bottle of West India rum. " Ah," said the toper, 
" here is consolation." He took a glass, another, then 
another. He lay down in a stupor. Late in the after- 
noon he staggered to his feet. A sense of loneliness 
drove him out in search of companionship. He found 
a neighbor with kindred tastes. Together they 
returned to Gough's room, and made a night of it. 
In " the wee sma' hours," the visitor hiccoughed a 
good-night, and stumbled away. Gough was so 
intoxicated that in groping his way back from the 



72 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

door he fell over a table, broke the lamp, and lay on 
the floor in the dark. By an effort he rose, found the 
bed, and, without undressing, threw himself upon it. 
But not to sleep. A horrible drowsiness put its fin- 
gers on his eyelids and pressed them down. A hor- 
rible wakefulness pried them open. Every sense was 
preternaturally acute. His mouth seemed to be 
stuffed full of dry flame. A furnace flamed in his 
stomach. Dawn looked in at the window. Gough 
rose, steadied himself, and sallied forth to replenish 
his stock of rum. With a fresh supply he returned, 
and for three days he lay on the bed nursing the bot- 
tle. During all that time he ate nothing, nor did he 
sleep. He rose, got a pipe, and went to bed again 
with it lighted between his lips. He dozed. His 
face became hot. He half awoke. The pillow was 
on fire! He dashed it to the floor and sank into a 
heavy stupor. From this state he was aroused by 
neighbors who had been attracted by the smell of 
fire. The straw on which he lay was smouldering 
and in a few moments more must have burst into 
flame! He was between two fires, unconscious of 
either. 

The fright sobered him — just enough to enable him 
to crawl out for more rum. He continued to drink, 
until his nervous system gave way. Alarmed now, 
he begged for a physician, who appeared, diagnozed 
the case as one of alcoholism, and banished all stimu- 
lants. Then came the drunkard's remorseless tor- 
turer, delirium tremens. Gough himself describes it: 

" For three days I endured more agony than pen can de- 
scribe, even were it guided by the mind of Dante. Who can 
tell the horrors of that malady, aggravated as it is by the con- 



DELIRIUM TREMENS. 73 

sciousness that it is self-produced ? Hideous faces appeared 
on the walls, on the ceiling, on the floors ; foul things crept 
along the bed-clothes, and glaring eyes peered into mine. I 
was at one time surrounded by millions of monstrous spiders 
that crawled slowly over every limb, whilst the beaded drops of 
perspiration started to my brow, and my limbs shivered till the 
bed rattled again. All at once, whilst gazing at a frightful 
creation of my distempered mind, I seemed struck with sudden 
blindness. I knew a candle was burning in the room, but I 
could not see it — it was so pitchy dark. I lost the sense of 
feeling, too, for I endeavored to grasp my arm in one hand — 
but consciousness was gone. I put my hand to my head, my 
side, but felt nothing, although knowing my frame and head were 
there. Then the scene would shift ; I was falling, falling, falling, 
swift as an arrow, far down into some terrible abyss. So like 
reality was it, that as I fell, I could see the rocky sides of a 
shaft where rocking, jibing, fiend-like forms were perched ; and 
I could feel the air rushing past me, making my hair stream 
out by the force of the unwelcome blast. Then the paroxysm 
ceased for a few moments, and I would sink back on my pallet, 
drenched with perspiration, utterly exhausted, and feeling a 
a dreadful certainty of the renewal of my torments." l 

For awhile this descent into the inferno startled 
Gough into abstinence. He was young. He re- 
covered rapidly. All that was necessary to make and 
keep him hale and hearty was a temperate life. Alas, 
no sooner did he feel like himself again than he re- 
turned to his cups like a dog to its vomit. His wife 
came home. With a drunkard's penchant for cele- 
brations, he memorialized the event by getting drunk. 
What a welcome ! 

Now began another series of wanderings. Travel- 



1 "Autobiography," pp. 103, 104. 



74 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

ing with a Diorama of the Battle of Bunker (" the 
British were here ; the Yankees were there ; and old 
Pat said: ' Dont fire, boys, till you see the whites of 
the Hessians' eyes ! ' "), he came to Worcester, Mass., 
a city destined to be for ever associated with his 
name. Here Mrs. Gough joined him. Worn out 
by destitution and racked by anxiety, she was in fail- 
ing health. In giving birth to an infant she died. 
The child followed her. Gough was " alone, in 
poverty," but not like the old saint, "with God." 

He was drunk when his wife and child died; drunk 
at the funeral ; only less squalid than his mother's ; 
drunk for weeks afterwards and unable to travel. He 
left the Diorama, or was left by it, and had recourse 
to his trade. Hutchinson and Crosby, bookbinders, 
gave him employment, in Worcester, and he worked 
when he was not drunk — and sometimes when he was. 
Indeed, nowadays he was always under the influence 
of liquor; it was only a question of more or less. His 
employers dismissed him. He pleaded for reinstate- 
ment on the ground of utter destitution on the edge 
of winter. 

" Gough," said Mr. Hutchinson, " I'll tell you what 
we'll do. You shall come back, provided you'll let 
us keep your money and buy for you what you need. 
If you don't have money you can't get drunk." 

Necessity cannot dictate terms — it accepts them. 
But after twelve years of self-support, Gough resented 
the passing under tutelage. He records this as 
among the bitterest of his humiliations. He had 
been out-at-the-elbow and down-at-the-heel. By the 
present arrangement he was clothed (though not " in 
his right mind " ). He had been frequently in need 



DELIRIUM TREMENS. 75 

of food — actually hungry. He was now sure of his 
meals. He had been shelterless. A roof and a bed 
were now secured to him. 

The lack of money for the purchase of rum kept 
him sober, did it not? Not a bit of it ! It only the 
more keenly aroused his appetite and developed his 
inventive faculties. Whatever household possessions 
remained to him were speedily drunk up. Then, in 
the evening, when the shop was shut, he sought one 
and another of the lowest groggeries, amused the 
bummers and loafers by his songs and stories, and 
took his payment in " treats." He chuckled to him- 
self : " How finely I'm outwitting old Hutchinson ! " 

Poor fool ! as though Hutchinson had any interest 
in the case aside from Gough's own good. 

On a certain evening when "exhilarated " and ripe 
for mischief, Gough, accompanied by a group of row- 
dies, adjourned from the tap-room to a neighboring 
church in which second advent services were being 
held in anticipation of a speedy end of the world. 
The church was noisy with fervor. Amid a fusil- 
lade of glorys, hallelujahs, and amens, the tipsy 
actor seized a huge, square, wooden spittoon, filled 
with sawdust, quids of tobacco, and refuse, and 
passing down the aisle, said: "We w T ill now take 
p a contribution for the purchase of ascension 
robes/' 1 

Amazement quieted the audience. Then the sac- 
rilegious clown was hustled out of doors and handed 
over to the police. The next day he was fined for 
disturbing public worship. An anonymous friend 



"Autobiography," pp. 119, 120. 



76 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

paid the fine — he never knew who, and thus saved him 
from jail. 

Again came delirium tremens — again the descent into 
hell — again the tortures of the damned. Pale as a 
ghost, weak as a child, Gough crawled out of the 
house, stopped at a drug-store, bought laudanum, 
proceeded to the railroad track, put the bottle to his 
lips, and was about to make an exit from life through 
the door of suicide. His courage failed. He dashed 
the poison to the ground, and barely escaped self- 
murder. 

Every morning he resolved to reform. Every even- 
ing he treated resolution. He became hateful to him- 
self, because he knew he was an object of universal 
contempt. True, he might, and often did, change his 
locality. He carried his environment with him. 
ever, was despised as soon as known, and might cry 
with the fiend in " Paradise Lost ": 

" Me miserable! which way shall I fly ? 
I cannot fly — myself am hell ! " 



PART IV. 

Recovery and Relapse 



u For to will is present with me, but how to 
perform what is good I find not. For the 
good that 1 would, I do not ; but the evil 
which I would not, that I do/' 

— St. Paul, Rom. vii. :i8, 19. 



THE KIND TOUCH ON THE SHOULDER. 

It was in October, 1842, — the last Sunday of the 
month. The air was tonic. Late in the afternoon, a 
poorly clad figure, surmounted by a flushed face, 
came out of a house in the mechanic quarter of Wor- 
cester and started off uncertainly down the street. 
The man was in that middle state between sobriety 
and intoxication when the senses are acute while the 
spirit is melanchol) r . Hating the drink which had 
unmanned him, he was, with the curious inconsis- 
tency characteristic of his kind, proceeding to arum- 
hole in Lincoln Square to get a dram. 

He felt a kind touch on the shoulder. 

The wayfarer turned and saw at his side a 
stranger. 

" Mr. Gough, I believe," said he. 

"Yes," was the answer, " but you have the advan- 
tage of me." 

" My name is Stratton — Joel Stratton. I'm a waiter 
yonder in the Temperance Hotel. You've been drink- 
ing to-day." 

Mr. Stratton's manner was so evidently considerate 
and friendly that Gough could not take offense. 

" Yes," confessed he, "I have." 

"Why don't you sign the pledge?" 



So JOHN B. GOUGH. 

" I have no will, no hope, no future — nothing. The 
drink has eaten out my soul. Alcohol which preserves 
snakes destroys men. I couldn't keep the pledge if I 
took it. My dreadful condition is that I at once hate 
rum and crave it." 

Mr. Stratton took the young man's arm and walked 
slowly on with him. 

" You were once respectable," he said; "wouldn't 
you like to be so again ? To have friends, to be a use- 
ful member of society ? " 

" I should like it first-rate," retorted Gough; "but 
I have no expectation that such a thing will ever 
happen." 

" Only sign our pledge," remarked the Good 
Samaritan, " and I will warrant it shall be so. Sign 
it, and I will myself introduce you to good friends 
who will feel an interest in your welfare and take 
pleasure in helping you to keep your good resolutions. 
Only sign the pledge, Mr. Gough, and all will be as I 
have said; aye, and more, too." / 

Hope stirred the embers of his lost manhood. 

Hope — it had been lost for years. 

" I will sign the pledge." 

" When ? " asked his friend. 

The devil-appetite suggested delay. " You've 
done enough in reaching a good resolution. Coddle 
this good resolution; treat it once more," whispered 
this devil. Gough hesitated a moment, then said: 

" I can't do it to-night. I must have some more 
drink presently; but I certainly will to-morrow." 

Mr. Stratton looked at him sharply. The glance 
convinced him that Gough was already whirling in the 
maelstrom of drunkenness — that should he sign now 



THE KIND TOUCH ON THE SHOULDER. 8l 

it would be only to break the pledge. He showed his 
practical wisdom by not insisting. 

" We have a temperance meeting in the town-hall 
to-morrow evening," said he; " will you take the 
pledge then?" 

" I will ! " 

" That is right," was the hearty response. " I will 
be there to see you." 

" You shall," said Gough. And they parted. 1 

What an enigma human nature is ! The sot who 
had just resolved that he would be temperate, went 
straight from the " valley of decision," on this blessed 
Sunday afternoon, to the dram-shop in Lincoln 
Square, which had been his objective point before he 
met his resurrectionist. He gulped down glass after 
glass of liquor. How good it seemed — never had it 
tasted so delicious as now, when it was about to be 
dropped for ever ! Again he was in the streets. They 
were filled with church-goers. He had already 
worshiped, with Bacchus for a god, and the bar for 
an altar, and the cup for a Bible, and the liquor-seller 
for the officiating priest. He staggered to his room, 
and fell on the bed, dead drunk. 

On Monday morning he arose, pressed his hands to 
his swollen, aching head, washed the stupor out of his 
eyes with trembling hands, and, without breakfast- 
ing, hurried away to the shop. We do not know, but 
we suspect that his work was ill-done that day. His 
mind was not on it. While he handled the wonted 
tools of his trade, his thoughts were elsewhere — in 
distant Sandgate by the Sea — on the Oneida County 



1 " Autobiography," pp. 127-129. 
6 



82 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

farm — with his sainted mother— reflecting upon his 
vagabond life — centered on his dead wife and baby — 
and at last enmeshed in baser associations. "John 
Gilpin's" famous ride was a quiet amble compared 
with this wild, reminiscent gallop of the mind, as the 
poor mechanic stood there in front of the work- 
bench. 

All the while the consciousness of the temperance 
meeting called for that evening, when he had prom- 
ised to sign the pledge, was ever present. A hundred 
times he said to himself, " I won't sign it! " Just as 
often he gritted his teeth, and said, "I will!" He 
fought numberless Waterloo battles with himself on 
that day. 

It was noon. He decided not to go to the meeting. 
It was afternoon. He resolved to go. Night fell. 
He left the shop with his mind made up: " I'll not 
sign away my liberty! " He ate no supper — thought 
was too husy. Up in his room he said: " I'd like to 
go to the town-hall, but I'm too tired — I've eaten 
nothing to-day." He looked at the clock. It was 
near the hour. Without waiting to think longer, he 
seized his hat, buttoned his overcoat over his rags up 
to the chin, and fairly rushed away. He entered the 
hall and seated himself. There was a call for the 
relation of experiences. Acting under impulse, 
Gough rose and told his wretched story. This was 
his first speech on temperance. 

Joel Stratton was there. When the prodigal ended 
his narration, he brought him the pledge and gave 
him the pen. 

Gough signed it — " in characters almost as crooked 
as those of old Stephen Hopkins on the Declaration 



THE KIND TOUCH ON THE SHOULDER. 83 

of Independence." It was his declaration of inde- 
pendence! 

Did that scrawl of a signature emancipate this 
slave of the bottle ? Not so. Nor did the Declara- 
tion of Independence free America; it took eight 
years of bloody warfare to do that. So Gough's 
pledge merely initiated his freedom, won only by a 
terrific succession of moral Bunker Hills, and Valley 
Forges, and Yorktowns. 

Miserable days and nights succeeded. Many times 
he was on the eve of giving up the struggle. " To be 
weak," says Milton, "is to be miserable, doing or suf- 
fering." His will had been rotted by alcohol, as acid 
rots cloth. His nerves, deprived of their accustomed 
stimulants, racked him like so many inquisitors. 
His stomach loathed wholesome food, and rejected 
it. Unwonted abstinence superinduced delirium 
tremens again. There were hours when Gough 
would have bartered his soul for one dram. But 
kind friends surrounded him. Their encouraging 
words helped him. Self-respect, long absent, 
returned to inspire the recovered outcast. A tedious 
sickness confined him to the bed, so that he could 
not get liquor. With time, appetite relaxed the 
vigor of its grip, though it did not die out — and 
never did. 

Out of " the body of this death " he emerged alive, 
and only alive. " Those who saw me," he remarks, 
"might have said as was said of Dante, when he 
passed through the streets of Florence: 

"There's the man that has been in hell." 1 



V Autobiography," p. 138. 



II. 



SMALL BEGINNINGS OF A GREAT CAREER. 

The drunkard is proverbially tattered and torn; 
has no regard for cleanliness and decency of apparel. 
Sobriety restores manhood; and, presto! the shoes 
are blackened, the wardrobe is renovated, the hair is 
combed, the inward change expresses itself through 
these significant outward signs. For seven years 
(from eighteen to twenty-five) Gough had neglected 
his person. Having signed the pledge, he straight- 
way new-clothed himself. This was not vanity; it 
was self-respect. 

In those days a temperance meeting was held every 
Monday night in Worcester. The reformed mechanic 
became a regular attendant. The week following 
the signing of the pledge, the president of the club 
observed him, and asked how he was getting on. 
Gough rose and said: 

" I am getting on very well, and feel a good deal 
better than I did a week ago." ' 

This was his second temperance address. The 
Demosthenes of total abstinence had a genius for 
oratory, but this was not displayed at once. At the 
weekly meetings referred to he usually said a few 
words, making speeches which were speechlets. Gradu- 
ally he enlarged upon the theme, kindled it with 



1 " Autobiography," p. 140. 



SMALL BEGINNINGS OF A GREAT CAREER. 85 

passion, seasoned it with humor, enforced it with 
pathos. Ere long the nascent orator was invited to 
repeat the story of his experience in outlying towns. 
Thus he became in a small way a temperance circuit 
rider. He had as yet no idea of making a business 
of lecturing. Nor did he extemporize his reputation. 
Like everything else of value, this had to be acquired. 
Months of practice in schoolhouses; countless verbal 
repetitions of his biography, aided in the develop- 
ment of the great advocate's powers. His custom 
was to work at the bench in the daytime, and then 
ride or walk in the evening to his appointments in 
the neighborhood. He had been a notorious case. 
The report of his reformation soon spread throughout 
the locality. The audiences, therefore, were large. 
Gough was a natural speaker. Continual practice 
did the rest. 

These meetings were usually held in schoolhouses 
or town-halls, a number of speakers taking part. At a 
gathering in West Boylston, Mass., Gough first occu- 
pied the whole time, and earned his first lecture-fee, 
$2, so that the occasion was doubly memorable. 1 As 
the weeks passed the local demands for his services 
increased so that he took off his apron, left the bind- 
ery, and the new life absorbed him. 

And now as the apostle of temperance begins his 
labors, it should seem proper to review the history of 
the cause. 

Our English temperance comes from a Latin word 
which means self-restraint, viz., temperantia. Its 
present sense restricts it to abstinence from intoxi- 



1 "Autobiography," p. 142. 



86 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

cants. Nor is there lacking classical authorit) r for 
this use. V By abstaining from sensual indulgences," 
remarks Aristotle, " we become temperate." Xeno- 
phon declares that the term temperance means, 
first, moderation in healthful indulgence, and, 
secondly, abstinence from things dangerous. Plato 
devotes the first two out of the twelve books of his 
Laws to a discussion of temperance legislation, and 
reaches the conclusion that there is a distinction 
between food and intoxicating beverages — that the 
one should be used in moderation and the other pro- 
hibited. This, too, is the conclusion of Herodotus, arid 
of Thomas Acquinas, and the mediaeval schoolmen. 

The vice thus banned is as old as authentic history. 
It began with Noah, and went with his sons, Shem, 
Japhet, and Ham, through Asia, Africa, and Europe. 
Drunkenness disfigures the Patriarchal era, the Mosaic 
dispensation, the Egyptian, Persian, Greek, and 
Roman militarisms, and the Christian economy — all 
hiccough and stagger. The classics are foul with 
intemperance; Anacreon is the poet-laureate of the 
ancient pot-house. And English literature up to 
within a hundred years is similarly poisoned. Pages, 
which otherwise laugh with wit, like those of Field- 
ing and Smollet, have to be expurgated into decency 
before we dare place them on the center table. 

Tacitus paints the ancient Britons as gluttons and 
sots, and the Roman is confirmed by the Venerable 
Bede. Our German ancestors, before they streamed 
out of their primeval forests into civilization and 
Christianity conceived of heaven as a drunken revel. 
With such an origin is it any wonder that drunken- 
ness is in the Anglo-Saxon blood ? 



SMALL BEGINNINGS OF A GREAT CAREER. 8/ 

The inebriating principle in liquor is alcohol— a 
modern name for an old devil. We have borrowed 
the designation from the Arabs, one of whose chem- 
ists (Albucasis), in the eleventh century, discovered 
an artificial method of producing it — although the 
Chinese knew the secret long before that, and anath- 
ematized the inventor, Iti. The chemists of the 
Middle Ages called alcohol aqua vitce — water of life. 
It has proved to be the water of death. 'Tis, in fact, 
the juice of decay, naturally produced by fermenta- 
tion, artificially produced by distillation, which simply 
hastens decomposition. 

Distillation cheapened alcohol, and so when it came 
into general use, enabled the poorest to have a "familiar 
spirit." The result has been especially disastrous in 
Europe and America. By the close of the seven- 
teenth century drunkenness was national and inter- 
national. Great Britain suffered worst of all. The 
use of distilled spirits, and the resultant evils, attracted 
universal attention. Hogarth's shocking cartoon of 
" Gin Lane " was tame compared with the actual fact. 
The historian Smollet, referring to London, says: 
" The populace were sunk into the most brutal de- 
generacy by drinking to excess the pernicious spirit 
called gin, which was sold so cheap that the lowest 
class of the people could afford to indulge themselves 
in one continuous state of intoxication, to the destruc- 
tion of all morals, industry, and order. Such a shame- 
ful degree of profligacy prevailed that the retailers of 
the poisonous compound set up painted boards in 
public inviting people to drink for the small expense 
of one penny, assuring them that they might be dead 
drunk for twopence, and have straw for nothing. 



88 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

They accordingly provided cellars and places strewed 
with straw to which they conveyed those wretches 
who were overwhelmed with intoxication. In these 
dismal caverns they lay until they recovered some 
use of their faculties, and then they had recourse to 
the same mischievous potion, thus consuming their 
health and ruining their families in hideous receptacles 
of the most filthy vice, resounding with riot, execra- 
tion and blasphemy/' ■ 

Nor was drunkenness the peculiar vice of the 
lowest — the highest were transgressors. Boling- 
broke, at the head of affairs, Addison in the Depart- 
ment of State, Walpole, the Prime Minister, at once 
set and followed the bad example, and Oxford, other- 
wise a high character, went frequently intoxicated 
into the very presence of the Queen — and went with- 
out rebuke! 

In contemporaneous America the situation was as 
bad or worse. The colonies were soaked in rum. 
Liquor-selling was a branch of other and reputable 
lines of trade. Everybody drank, and almost every- 
body got drunk. Independence, which brought polit- 
ical relief, did not affect this evil. Through the 
eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth cen- 
turies people drank as they ate, as a matter of course. 
A decanter stood on every sideboard. The guest who 
did not pledge his host, the host who did not drink 
the health of his guest, was deemed uncivil. Farmers 
supplied their u help " with grog as they did with 
bread. Was there a house raising ? It was signalized 
by a free provision of rum and a general carousal. A 



" History of England," Vol. III., chap. 7, 



SMALL BEGINNINGS OF A GREAT CAREER. 89 

funeral ? The attendants were " treated " as part of the 
ceremony. A lawyer, like Daniel Webster, was not 
singular when he held on by the rail in order to stand 
and argue a case, half drunk, in the Supreme Court 
of the United States. Famous doctors went drunk 
to their patients. Clerical conventions were opened 
and closed with a glass of grog as regularly as they 
were with prayer; the one was as orthodox as the 
other. Religious denominations were noted for 
" never giving up a ' pint ' of doctrine or a pint of rum." 
The entrance to a hotel was sure to lie through the 
bar-room. Everybody ordered wine for dinner, 
whether it was drank or not — not to do so was 
thought " mean. " In those days three-quarters of the 
farms of Massachusetts were sold under the hammer 
for rum debts. 1 That is to say, liquor was regarded 
as a necessary part of private and public provender. 
The man who did not drink was exceptional — was 
tabooed as unconvivial. He who could tip the largest 
number of bottles and lie last under the table, was 
looked upon as the truest gentleman. To be carried 
habitually drunk to bed was a patent of nobility. 
"As drunk as a lord," is a proverb inherited from 
those times. 

Was nothing done through all these ages to anti- 
dote this poison ? Various remedies were suggested, 
some few were attempted, but these were only palli- 
atives. Acts of Parliament in England, statutes 
in America, were framed in the interest of restric- 



1 Wendell Phillips's " Review of Dr. Howard Crosby's ' Calm 
View of Temperance,' " pub. by Am. Nat. Tem. Soc'y, New York 
City, 1881. 



90 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

tion, but were vitiated by some form of license, con- 
strued into sanction. In 1785, Dr. Benjamin Rush 
published his essay against ardent spirits, and thus 
began a period of preparation. More than a quarter 
of a century later (in 1825), Dr. Lyman Beecher added 
his magnificent contribution in " Six Sermons on In- 
temperance"; each one a columbiad, whose detona- 
tion aroused the sleeping conscience of the Church. 
The evil was so present, so visible, that when their at- 
tention was called to it, other clergymen of prominence, 
like Dr. Justin Edwards, and Dr. Leonard Woods 
began to inveigh against it. Within two decades 
most of the clergy of New England had become ab- 
stainers. Temperance societies were organized — one 
of the earliest being the American Society for the 
Promotion of Temperance, in Boston, in 1826. Tem- 
perance newspapers were also founded. Of these 
The National Philanthropist, established by William 
Collier, a Baptist city missionary, in Boston, also in 
1826, deserves special mention, as it was the first 
newspaper in the world which was devoted to the 
temperance cause and which advocated total absti- 
nence. This sheet was the mate, in a kindred reform, 
of The Liberator, organ of the Abolitionists. And, 
significantly enough, Wm. Lloyd Garrison served an 
editorial apprenticeship in the office of The National 
Philanthropist before he graduated into The Liberator. 
By the year 1834, the reform movement had spread 
to twenty-one States, and 5,000 local temperance 
societies had been organized, with a membership of 
1,000,000 strong. Before the close of that decade, at 
least three States, viz., Tennessee (in 1838), and Missis- 
sippi and Ohio (both in 1839), had enacted prohibitory 



SMALL BEGINNINGS OF A GREAT CAREER. 91 

laws — advanced ground which they soon abandoned. 

In 1840 the Rev. Matthew Hale Smith lectured in 
Baltimore, Md., on the evils of intemperance. One 
or two men heard him who were members of a 
mechanic's drinking-club, which met in the tap-room 
of an adjourning tavern. They carried back to the 
pot-house a report of the discourse. The question 
was hotly debated between the members. As the 
outcome, six of them went over to total abstinence, 
established an organization which they called " The 
Washingtonian Temperance Society, " and started an 
active propaganda. These six original apostles were 
presently joined by a seventh, J. H. VV. Hawkins, a 
reformed inebriate, who became the St. Paul of " the 
Washingtonians," as they were popularly called. 
Washingtonianism caught from town to town and 
kindled from State to State. Hundreds of thousands 
signed the pledge under its auspices, most of them 
drinking men. 

In this wonderful movement there were two radical 
defects. First, it was based on mere moral suasion 
— upon what it called " the law of love," and discoun- 
tenanced any appeal to prohibitive law. Second, it 
ignored religion — when it did not antagonize it. A 
movement thus operated by sentimentalism and in- 
fidelity could hardly be long lived, even though it 
sought to remedy an evil like intemperance. When 
the novelty wore off, Washingtonianism began to 
"dwindle, break, and pine." But while it lasted it 
started agents and agencies more potent than itself, 
which gather force as the years roll on. 

It was in this temperance revival that John B. 
Gougfa was born again. 



III. 



TEMPTED. 



Mr. Gough was now fully occupied as a Washing- 
tonian lecturer. His reputation and engagements were 
as yet local. The first, however, waxed daily; and 
as for the others, towns crowded one another in the 
effort to secure his services. 

He sadly missed at this time a wise and watchful 
intimate to moderate his pace. Unused to the new 
life, which was very exciting, deprived of a stimu- 
lus to which he had been long wedded, he was in 
grave moral danger. The peril was aggravated by a 
feeling of self-sufficiency which now puffed him up. 
Poor fellow ! yesterday an outcast, to-day a favorite 
— is it any wonder that his head swelled again as it 
swelled of old, though from a different cause ? 

" Pride goeth before a fall." Gough needed to 
fall in order to rise — to realize his weakness that he 
might find his strength. 

He had abstained for five months. He believed 
his appetite conquered — and by himself. Knowing 
little of medicine, he was not alarmed by certain 
symptoms which were danger-signals — extreme rest- 
lessness, occasional incoherence of thought and 
speech, a sense of apprehension, and an intense nerv- 
ousness which made the slamming of a door jar his 



TEMPTED. 93 

whole system. A good physician, observing these 
symptoms would have prescribed rest and quiet. His 
doctor gave him tincture of tolu, with opium — the 
worst prescription imaginable. 

One day he dropped his engagements and took 
the cars to Boston, without a purpose, save to do 
something. It was a case of nervous prostration; he 
feared delirium tremens. Hallucinations already 
haunted him. In Boston he went to the theater — 
met some former associates — told them of his strange 
feelings — accompanied them to an oyster-house, and 
— took brandy! 

He took it thoughtlessly. When he had swallowed 
it, he felt as Peter did after he had denied Christ, and 
the cock crew. To drown thought he drank repeat- 
edly, but not to intoxication. From Boston the 
fallen lecturer went to Newburyport, drawn thither 
unconsciously by old associations. The news of his 
reform had preceded him — but not of his relapse. 
Friends of the cause urged him to speak there. He 
did, twice, though agonized by his false position. 
After a few days he returned to Boston, where he 
also stayed for several days, drinking in the mean- 
while, and trying to make up his mind what to do. 
His temperance career was closed — there was no 
doubt of that. But he z:ould be a sober man. He 
resolved to go back to Worcester, confess his fault, 
then depart to — no matter where. 

Gough reached Worcester on a Saturday, went 
directly to several of his closest friends, told them 
what had occurred, resigned the pledge, and packed 
his belongings preparatory to leaving town. He was 
urged to wait and attend the well-known temperance 



94 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

meeting on Monday night. He did; and in a pathetic 
address which melted speaker and auditors, sobbed 
out the story of his sin and penitence. Resolutions 
of sympathy and confidence were publicly adopted. 
The sin was condoned. The penitent was reinstated. 

Mr. Gough was an apt scholar That relapse in 
Boston led him to see that a change in the will is a 
different thing from a change in the appetite. A de- 
praved appetite lies couchant in the body, like a tiger 
in a jungle, ready to spring out and craunch when- 
ever the victim is unwary. He thus detected one fatal 
defect in Washingtonianism which was based on moral 
suasion. Reflection taught him, too, the absolute 
necessity of religious principle. A higher power than 
man sways is required to hold an infirm will to a 
righteous purpose and the appetite in subordination. 
Appeals to ''manhood''' tickle human vanity; but 
while they please, they damn. One "hid with Christ 
in God " is safe. And so he preceived the second 
philosophical error in the YVashingtonian crusade — 
its neglect of personal piety as the most stable founda- 
tion in reform. 

Strange, that a third great truth did not dawn 
upon his consciousness, viz., the importance of 
prohibitive law as an indispensable safeguard. 
When he went into the streets of the Xew Eng- 
land metropolis on that sad day, they were set 
thick with pitfalls. A weak or depraved man was 
almost sure to trip and fall into vice. Prohibition 
would have closed those abounding doors, and made 
the streets comparatively safe for feet like his to 
tread. 

Moreover, prevention is better than cure. Prohibit- 



TEMPTED. 95 

ive law seeks to forestall temptation. It contemplates 
the salvation of the drunkard; but it does more — it 
aims at the preservation of unsoiled youth and inex- 
perience. Under such a law Gough would not have 
become a drunkard — would have been saved from 
those seven years of sin and shame. Eventually, he 
reached this truth, also; but not as early as might 
have been expected. 

The relation between these three great parts of 
temperance is obvious. Moral suasion in the wrecker's 
boat rowed through the surf to clutch from the 
fiery waves of alcohol the wretches who have made 
shipwreck of manhood. Religion nurses them back 
to health and strength after they have been brought 
ashore. Prohibitive law prevents further shipwrecks 
by removing the rocks or shoals which imperil the 
voyage of life. 

Reformed inebriates sometimes imagine that, after 
a period of abstinence, they can begin again and 
drink moderately. There is no case on record of 
success in such an undertaking. And for the reason 
already mentioned — the will is weakened and the ap- 
petite depraved. Indulgence leads inevitably, invari- 
ably to excess. Moderate men may drink moderately, 
provided they have never been drunkards, although 
even they are in danger. But for those who have 
been down, and are now up, there is only one rule — 
total abstinence. 

And so, as it concerns men whose temperament is 
nervous, susceptible men, pushing and shoving men, 
whose pulses throb with energy, and whose being is 
marked plus — for such total abstinence is the only 
safe practice. " I can abstain," said old Dr. Samuel 



96 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

Johnson; " I can't be moderate." As for Mr. Gough, 
he testified, years after he had stopped drinking, that 
the mere smell of brandy gave him a raging thirst 
for it which God's grace alone quenched. His life 
was a battle. Like the bravos who skulked under 
the shadows in mediaeval Venice, appetite and tempt- 
ation dogged his footsteps with poisoned stiletto, 
watching for a chance to strike. He illustrated the 
saying of Goethe that " He only earns his freedom 
and existence who daily conquers them anew." 



PART V. 

In the Arena 



" We do not take possession of our ideas, 
but are possessed by them. They mas- 
ter us and force us into the arena, 
where, like gladiators, we must fight 
for them." 

— Heine, 



ON THE PLATFORM. 

The speed with which Mr. Gough got upon his 
feet after the fall in Boston is proof of his grit. Fold- 
ing that experience he marked it " important," filed 
it away in his memory for future reference, and at 
once resumed his labors in the cause of temperance. 

" Possessed by the one dread thought that lent 
Its goad to his fiery temperament, 
Up and over the land he went, 
A John the Baptist, crying — ' Repent ! ' " 

During the earlier half of his first year in the work, 
he made his name and fame known in Worcester 
County ; in the latter half he became a magnet 
throughout New England. He was ubiquitous — 
indefatigable. " In three hundred and sixty-five 
days," he says, " I gave three hundred and eighty- 
three addresses, and received for them $1,059 — out of 
which I paid all my traveling expenses ; traveled six 
thousand, eight hundred and forty miles ; and 
obtained fifteen thousand, two hundred and eighteen 
signatures to the pledge." l 

Facts of this kind he habitually jotted down in a 



"Autobiography," p. 160. 



IOO JOHN B. GOUGH. 

vade mecum. He could have earned more money at 
bookbinding ; but his heart was set now upon some- 
thing better than money. Sometimes, however, the 
meanness or thoughtlessness of his audience put him 
in straits. In 1843 his average pay for a lecture was 
$2.77 ! u Once," he writes, " after I had been speak- 
ing for nearly two hours, and had taken my seat, the 
chairman rose and proposed a vote of thanks, which 
was passed unanimously. As the audience were being 
dismissed I asked if that vote of thanks ' could be given 
me in writing? as perhaps the conductor on the train 
would take it for my fare.' The hint was sufficient, 
and a collection was taken up, amounting to $4." ■ 

In September, 1843, Gough spoke for the first time 
in Boston. He had avoided that town, because he 
underrated his own ability and overrated Boston cul- 
ture — which, like many others, he believed to be four 
feet thick on a level. Probably the American Athens 
was a formidable arena. Intelligence was as high 
there as anywhere in the New World ; and many of 
the most famous speakers of the day were Boston 
men. There Otis and Adams and Ames and Quincy 
had thundered ; there Webster and Everett and 
Choate and Wendell Phillips, were " names to conjure 
with." No wonder the young mechanic shrank from 
the ordeal. 

At a temperance gathering in rural Massachusetts, 
in the summer of 1843, he met and made a lifelong 
friend — Deacon Moses Grant. This gentleman was 
a Bostonian, the son of one of the revolutionary tea- 
spillers, a wealthy merchant, and the president of the 



1 4 'Autobiography," p. 161. 



ON THE PLATFORM. IOI 

Boston Temperance Society. Mr. Grant had traveled 
in Europe, and had been liberally educated in 
America. He was of a nervous, sanguine tempera- 
ment, under the medium size, and had a habit of 
twitching the muscles of his face and shrugging his 
shoulders when specially interested — a peculiarity 
which Gough instantly detected. He wrote a sensi- 
ble letter, made a practical speech, was peculiarly 
happy in his remarks to children, and was in demand 
as chairman on all philanthropic occasions. 

It was this good man who had invited Gough to 
Boston. After no little hesitation, he consented to 
become Mr. Grant's guest, and to speak under his 
auspices. 

A mortification met the young orator on the 
threshold. He was arrested for debt. During the 
Arab days, when drunkenness and poverty were his 
inseparable companions, he had H remembered to 
forget " to pay a board bill in Boston. The landlady 
saw the announcement of his lecture, recognized the 
name, found out where he lodged, and dispatched an 
officer to collect the debt ($20), or collar the debtor. 
From this dilemma Deacon Grant extricated the 
impecunious lecturer, and bore him off in triumph to 
the meeting in Tremont Chapel, under the Boston 
Museum. 

Mr. Gough acquitted himself so satisfactorily that 
he was engaged on the spot to speak three nights 
more in Boston, which he did to ever-increasing 
audiences, and amid great enthusiasm. And ever 
after the announcement of his name was sure to 
crowd the largest halls in the city. 

After a few weeks spent in circling around the 



102 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

" Hub," " temperancing," as he used to say, and 
creating a furore everywhere — at Nashua, N. H. 
(where he spoke with Franklin Pierce, afterwards 
President of the United States, as a fellow talker); 
Concord, X. H.; New Bedford, Marblehead, and then 
down into the " Old Colony," in the neighborhood of 
Plymouth Rock — Cxough ran back to Boston. Thence, 
on the 23d of November, 1843, ne proceeded to Boyl- 
ston, near Worcester, to be married. 

Some time before this he had spoken in Boylston, 
and had met a certain lady destined to become 
another self — a feminine and, therefore, etherealized 
self, and a helpmeet in very truth. Her name was 
Mary Whitcomb. She was a New England farmer's 
daughter, a Yankee schoolma'am, physically strong, 
intellectually alert and appreciative, morally sweet 
and pure, and a devoted Christian. 

"A creature not too bright and good 
For human nature's daily food — 
For transient sorrows, simple wiles, 
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. 
A perfect woman, nobly planned, 
To warn, to comfort, and command ; 
And yet a spirit still, and bright 
With something of an angel light." 

During their brief courtship of a few weeks, they 
talked of religion rather than of love; but is not 
religion love ? " She took me on trust" remarks the 
husband, " with $3.50 in my pocket; but Mary was 
willing to risk it with me." ■ 



1 " Autobiography," p. 172. 



ON THE PLATFORM. I03 

Mary Whitcomb understood John Gough by intu- 
ition — his weakness, his strength; saw what he 
required to transmute the first into the last, and sup- 
plied the means. They were married on the 24th of 
November, 1843, by a ministerial mutual friend, in 
Worcester, with Spartan simplicity — " no bridal 
wreaths or gifts; no wedding-ring or cards; no 
bridesmaids or groomsmen — only they two agreeing 
to walk the journey of life together/' From this date 
on for years, Mary Gough accompanied her husband 
everywhither, prolonging his life by her care, and 
doubling his usefulness by her inspiration. 

Mr. Gough's manner of speaking was so exhausting 
(to him) that when he closed a lecture he dripped 
with perspiration; his clothes were wringing wet; his 
vitality was spent; he was in a state of collapse. 
Hours of attention were necessary in order to soothe 
him into quietude. He had to be recuperated With 
bath and food; nor did sleep come until long past 
midnight. His wife made herself his nurse — his 
" brave, faithful Mary! " 

The young couple went from Worcester back to 
Boston; where the proud husband introduced the 
bride to Deacon Grant. The good deacon, realizing 
the fact that marriage makes or mars two lives, had 
been doubtful about the choice of his protege. When 
he saw her he said: 

"John, she'll do!" 

And, Gough adds the comment a quarter of a cen- 
tury later, " nobly she has done." 

They fixed their residence in Roxbury, now a divi- 
sion of Boston. The groom spoke that very evening 
in Roxbury on his favorite theme, rested on the Sun- 



104 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

day which followed, and then went on with his work, 
spending the honeymoon and the weeks that suc- 
ceeded, on the platform. 

In the spring of 1844, with Mrs. Gough for a travel- 
ing companion, he visited New York City to attend 
the anniversary of the American Temperance Union, 
on the 9th of May. The meeting was held in the 
Broadway Tabernacle, an historic hall long since 
demolished. Gough's name was not as familiar then 
as it soon became. As he rose to speak, towards the 
end of a long session, many people rose with him — 
to leave; not a common practice in his experience, 
even then. But those who remained enjoyed a treat. 

Various other points in the Middle States were 
visited on this tour — Brooklyn, Newark, Philadelphia, 
Baltimore, among the number. Then Boston was 
sought again, where a notable temperance celebra- 
tion was held on the 30th of May, with the city 
dressed as gaily as Venice used to be when the Doge 
wedded the city by the sea to the sea: stores closed 
an endless procession in the streets, a monster mass- 
meeting on the Common, and a grand finale in the 
evening in Faneuil Hall, with Gough for the orator. 

Off again: this time to deliver a series of thirty 
addresses in western New York (where Mr. Gough 
pointed out to " Mary " the Oneida farm) — compen- 
sation, $10 a lecture, the itinerants paying their own 
expenses. They were not likely to get rich on such 
terms. 

" No matter, John," said Mary; " we are doing the 
Lord's work." 

It was during this tour that the couple first saw 
Niagara Falls. " I thought," comments Gough, " that 



ON THE PLATFORM. I05 

a parallel might be drawn between the stream, rapids, 
and cataract before me, and the stream, rapids, and 
cataract of drunkenness. Above the Falls of Intem- 
perance the water is bright and smooth, thousands 
who embark on that placid stream, as it glides down 
and comes into the rapids, are swept on with fearful 
rapidity, and sent into the gulf at a rate of 30,000, 
40,000, and 50,000 a year, a dreadful waste of human 
life. The friends of humanity see this terrible destruc- 
tion; they station themselves above, and cry out to 
the people, ' Back! back for your lives: none escape 
who get into these rapids except by miracle.' " 1 

Upon reaching Boston again, now their headquart- 
ers, Mrs. Gough proved the strength of her influence 
for good over her husband by pursuading him to unite 
with the Church. She was already a Church mem- 
ber, and transferred her membership by letter to the 
Mount Vernon Congregational Church, in Boston, 
Mr. Gough coming into the fold upon confession of 
his faith. In the pastor, the Rev. Dr. E. N. Kirk, 
both found a warm and helpful friend, in full sym- 
pathy with their spiritual and moral aims. Dr. Kirk 
possessed remarkable pulpit gifts and graces, and was 
a tongue of Penticostal fire in his day. 

With his feet thus set on the Rock of Ages, and set 
to stay, and with such a wife at his side, the young 
lecturer felt strong to do and dare for God and 
humanity. 

The close of the year, 1844, was selected by the 
friends of temperance in Boston for another demon- 
stration in Faneuil Hall. A vast audience assembled 



1 M Platform Echoes, " pp. 617-618. 



106 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

to hear and cheer Mr. Gough. It was on this occa- 
sion that he introduced his apostrophe to water, 
which soon became famous across the continent. 
Holding in his hand a glass filled with it, he said : 

" Is not this beautiful ? Talk of ruby wine. Here 
is our beverage — water, pure water; we drink it to 
quench our thirst. There is no occasion to drink ex- 
cept to quench one's thirst ; and here is the beverage 
our Father has provided for His children. When 
Moses smote the rock the people were thirsty, and it 
was water that came forth, not wine, or rum, or ale. 
Were you ever thirsty, with lips dry and feverish, and 
throat parched ? Did you never lift the goblet of 
pure water to your lips and feel it trickling over the 
tongue and gurgling down the throat ? Was it not 
luxury ? Give to the traveler on the burning desert, 
as he lies perishing with thirst, a goblet of cold water, 
and he will return the goblet heaping with gold ; 
give him wine, rum, or ale, and he turns away in 
feverish disgust to die. Our beverage is beautiful 
and pure, for God brewed it — not in the distillery, 
but out of the earth." 

The orator then described it as enveloping the earth 
in wintry mantle, as rolling up the valley in the cloud- 
mist, settling on the mountain-top, and descending in 
the rain; and painted it in the streamlet, in the rain- 
bow, beautiful always and blessed; no curse in it, no 
heartbroken mother or pale-faced wife, no starving 
child nor dying drunkard to lament its existence, and 
he concluded: 

" ' Give water to me, bright water to me, 
It cooleth the brow, it cooleth the brain. 
It maketh the weak man strong again/ 



ON THE PLATFORM. I07 

" Tell me, young men and maidens, old men and 
matrons, will you not dash from your lips the drink 
that maddens and destroys and take as your beverage 
the beautiful gift our Father in Heaven has provided 
for His children?" 1 

The apostrophe was seldom repeated verbatim. 
The speaker was always changing it, sometimes for 
the better, often for the worse; but it never failed to 
call forth a hearty response. 

With the Godspeed of Faneuil Hall Mr. and Mrs. 
Gough proceeded to Philadelphia, where he opened 
the year 1845 under the shadow of another historic 
edifice — Independence Hall, in which the first Conti- 
nental Congress met and the immortal Declaration 
was signed. 

The reformer had spoken before in the Quaker 
City, but under poor management and to small num- 
bers. He came now to fill an engagement with the 
Pennsylvania State Temperance Society, which gave 
him prestige. Besides, his reputation was now con- 
tinental. His success was phenomenal. After speak- 
ing in several churches on successive evenings, 
he was driven at last to the immense Chinese 
Museum, and this also was twice crowded to suffoca- 
tion. 

At this period Mr. Gough spoke his biography, 
with numerous asides, both humorous and pathetic. 
He then sang a song or two (which will surprise those 
who heard him only in later years), and solicited sig- 



1 In his book entitled " Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 359, 360, 
Mr. Gough gives the apostrophe, and defends himself against the 
charge of plagiarizing it from Paul Denton. 



Io8 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

natures to the pledge — quite after the fashion of an 
evangelist nowadays, exhorting converts. 

In appearance, in these early years, he was pale and 
thin — the shadow of a man, and looked tall, though only 
S feet and 7 inches in stature. His hair was bushy, 
and he tossed it about as a lion does his mane. His 
coat was close-buttoned to the chin. The lithe form 
was always in motion, and needed a large platform 
for full effect. " The restless, eager hands, supple as 
India-rubber, were perpetually busy flinging the hair 
forward, in one character, back in another, or stand- 
ing it straight up in a third; crushing the drink-fiend, 
pointing to the angel in human nature, or doubling 
up the long coat tails in the most grotesque climaxes 
of gesticulation, when, ' with a hop, skip, and jump/ 
he proceeded to bring down the house. Dickens says 
of one of his humorous characters that ' his very knees 
winked '; but there was a variety and astonishment of 
expression in every movement of Mr. Gough that lit- 
erally beggars description." 1 

In the midst of what in another might have seemed 
extravagance, there was a steady self-command which 
enabled him to ride the storm he raised. He was not 
like Falstaff, who in a double sense made a butt of 
himself, first, by swallowing so much sack, and 
secondly, by conceit. Good sense and wisdom, eleva- 
tion and enthusiasm, marked both wit and pathos. 
His description comprehended everything — character, 
mode of dress, peculiar gestures, different humors, 
style of speaking and writing, down to the last detail. 



1 Miss Frances E. Willard's description, quoted in " A Knight 
That Smote the Dragon," pp. 150, 151, 



ON THE PLATFORM. I09 

He was an animated photographic apparatus, talking 
and acting pictures. His transitions of mood were 
lightning-like in their rapidity. He amused and in- 
structed, fired and sobered, by his coincidences, com- 
parisons, combinations, in a single breath. The man 
was a galvanic battery, and electrified his hearers. 

An English traveler, then in Philadelphia, was at- 
tracted to hear Gough while these meetings were in 
progress. He went — not expecting much, for he had 
heard the great orators of England. We quote a few 
words from his account: 

" It was the most awfully interesting biography I ever lis- 
tened to. . . . At one moment he convulsed the audience 
with merriment, then, as if by touch of an enchanter's wand, he 
subdued them to tears. It was a wonderful display of his 
power of the feelings and passions; and yet, with all, there 
was so much of humility, that one knew not which most to ad- 
mire — the man or his matter. Mr. Gough is an admirable 
mimic, and tells a story with more point than, Charles Mat- 
thews excepted, any other story-teller I ever listened to. . . . 
Taken altogether, it may be safely said that he is one of those 
men whom the Almighty calls out, at certain periods, to wage 
His battles and effect great moral reforms." ' 

It was in 1845, that the first " Autobiography " ap- 
peared. Gough dictated it to a friend, a short-hand 
writer, as he paced the room — talked and walked it off. 
The booklet (it has less than 150 pages) ran through 
more than thirty editions. 'Tis admirably done, and 
cantains pathos and humor enough to make and pre- 
serve the reputation of the author, had he done noth- 
ing more. 



First " Autobiography/' Boston 1855, p. 149, sq. Appendix. 



II. 



THE "DOCTORED SODA-WATER. 

Those who have lived for others, and striven to 
make the world better, have usually lived as martyrs. 
Mr. Gough appeared to be an exception to the rule. 
His popularity was so great from the beginning to 
the end, the crowds he drew were so enormous that 
many who saw him only on the stage of action 
thought his career was a fete, a generation long. 
Those who looked behind the scenes knew better. 
His enemies were among the bitterest of their ilk, 
and from the outset, detractors made him a target to 
practise at 

Mr. Gough was -of an oversensitive disposition. 
Enmity and detraction pierced his heart as though 
they had been arrows. He winced, and showed that 
he was hit — a fact well known in the camp of his foes, 
and of which advantage was taken to continue or 
inflame the torture. It is to the credit of the 
reformer that, though he winced, he did not swerve. 
He maintained the manner of life which brought him 
into inevitable collision with wicked men by disturb- 
ing their plans, or with selfish co-laborers by out- 
dazzling their dimness. 

His vulnerable spot was his former life — the heel 
of Achilles, whither the arrows flew. Human nature 



THE " DOCTOFED SODA-WATER. Ill 

is various, and some varieties do seem superfluous ! 
Certain critics of Gough really disbelieved in the 
genuineness of his reformation, of any such reforma- 
tion, and said that he had only added hypocrisy to 
his original vice. Others pretended to disbelieve. 
Lies swarmed about his pathway, most of them accu- 
sations of drinking on the sly. A liquor-seller at 
Newburyport, for instance, asserted that Mr. Gough 
had stopped to drink in his restaurant on the way 
from one of his temperance lectures to the train. He 
was forced by a threat of legal proceedings to retract 
this lie, and apologize for it. But where one liar was 
caught, a dozen escaped, and lied on. 

Worse yet; attempts were made to entrap him into 
inconsistent and vicious conduct, and thus destroy 
his reputation. One of these had well-nigh suc- 
ceeded. 

Mr. Gough went to New York City in the autumn 
of 1845 to map down his route and arrange his dates 
for the approaching winter. He arrived at 6:30 
o'clock; went to a hotel; supped; left word at the 
office that he might not return that night, as he was 
going to Brooklyn to visit friends; strolled out upon 
Broadway; entered a store or two, and made trifling 
purchases; resumed his stroll; and was accosted by a 
stranger. 

"Good-evening, Mr. Gough/' 

It was now near eight o'clock. Mr. Gough did not 
recognize the speaker, and said so. 

" Well, I used to know you years ago, when you 
worked in this city," said he. ".My name is Williams 
— Jonathan Williams." 

The time referred to was several years back; the 



112 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

man appeared honest. Gough was unsuspicious — 
indeed there seemed no occasion for suspicion. The 
lecturer made a cordial response. 

" You have got into a new business since we worked 
together," continued " Williams," as he walked on 
beside the former bookbinder. 

" Yes," replied Gough; " I'm giving my time to 
temperance." 

" I suppose," said " Williams," " you are so good 
and proud now that you'd not drink a glass of soda 
with an old shopmate." 

" Oh, yes, I would," was the hearty answer. 

They were then opposite a drug-store, and both 
stepped in. There was a crowd around the fountain. 

" Oh," said " Williams," " we can't get served here. 
I know a better place." 

They went out, sauntered down Chambers street 
to Chatham, and entered another store. This time 
they got their soda-water; " Williams," handing 
Gough a glass, with his hand over the top of it, which 
the latter thought rude, though he suspected nothing 
at the moment. They left together and soon parted. 
In a short while Gough, although out of doors, became 
dazed, lost his way, and was abducted and secreted 
for nearly a week, being found in a disreputable 
house in Walker street, in a stupor. 

Friends bore him away to Brooklyn, his objective 
point when he quitted the hotel on the evening of 
September 5th. Here, at the residence of Mr. and 
Mrs. Hurlbut, he was tenderly nursed. Mrs. Gough 
was sent for. The lost was found, and in good hands 
again. 

Of course, this dramatic episode caused wide-spread 



THE "DOCTORED SODA-WATER. 113 

comment. Gough's enemies were jubilant. A search- 
ing inquisition was made, however, by a committee 
of the Mount Vernon Church, specially appointed for 
the purpose ; whose report completely exonerated 
Mr. Gough. The physician who treated him in 
Brooklyn testified that he found abundant evidence 
of drugging. The public press at the time generally 
denounced the abduction. Gough was robbed in 
that den — but not of his good name. 

Probably, "Williams" followed his victim to New 
York, as he disappeared and was never detected. 
He " doctored " the soda-water when he passed it 
with his hand over the rim. Confederates watched the 
drugged man after the parting. When they saw him 
bewildered they plied him with liquor, and guided 
him to the place where he was finally discovered. 

The case is painful. Circumstances of mystery 
still surround it. We have not felt called upon to go 
at length into it, because Mr. Gough has himself 
done so in documents easily accessible. 1 What was 
called his second "fall" gave his opponents an 
advantage of which they then and for years after- 
ward availed themselves. But this was the last cloud 
on his name. His life for forty years, pure, noble, 
Jived out in the sun, must be permitted to interpret 
this dark passage. 

It should be added that Mr. Gough confessed to 
imprudence on this occasion, but never to any guilt. 
The wife stood by her husband and blamed herself, 
wife-like, for permitting him for once to go alone to 
New York. 



" Autobiography " pp. 195-209. 
8 



114 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

But even had this been a genuine " fall," surprise 
would be out of place. Temperance may be in the 
purpose when intemperance is in the conduct. Pathol- 
ogy and moral science show that the worst action of 
inebriety is on the will. It shatters the nerves, but it 
paralyzes the will. Hence, years are often needed 
for recovery — years marked by occasional lapses. 
The question with regard to a reformed man ought 
not to be — 

" How many times has he fallen ?" 

It should be — 

" How long has he stood ? " 

He who comes out of drunkenness and stands forty 
years, is a moral hero. 

Through the rest of September and the whole of 
October and November, Mr. Gough lay at the point 
of death. It was not until the beginning of Decem- 
ber that he was sufficiently strong to mount the plat- 
form. 

Thus ended the year 1845. 



III. 



" FOOTPRINTS ON THE SANDS OF TIME." 

Another severe trial awaited Mr. Gough. As time 
passed he found himself more and more out of sym- 
pathy with Washingtonianism. He was sincerely 
attached to that movement, and had occasion to be, for 
it had rescued him. Its leaders were his close friends. 
He was its most eloquent exponent. But experience 
and observation taught him the insufficiency of its 
methods. He both felt and saw that piety alone 
clenched the nails which moral suasion drove in. The 
pledge started the inebriate toward manhood. Man- 
hood itself, however, involved not one virtue, but 
many. The ultimate motive was the fear and love of 
God. This anchored character. Therefore, he intro- 
duced into his addresses religious appeals, and grad- 
ually animated the temperance reformation with a 
new spirit. 

Keen ears and eyes heard everything he said, and 
watched everything he did. This departure was soon 
noted. His old associates stood aloof and denounced 
him. They believed in moral suasion, and in nothing 
else. They believed the mere wish to break-off intem- 
perate habits signified in a pledge would save the 
drunkard. Men hardly steadied into sobriety as- 
sumed to be teachers instead of sitting as learners. 



Il6 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

Such men led the crusade. Success was measured by 
the number of names signed to the pledge, rather 
than by the renovated lives that followed the signing. 
There was jealousy of the Church as a rival institu- 
tion. The Washingtonians, as a rule, refused to open 
their meetings with prayer, disowned the Bible, 
scouted the idea of piety, and were, many of them, 
avowed freethinkers. Naturally, too, for they were 
converts of the tavern. A bar-room is a poor divinity 
hall. 

In reviewing these facts at a later day, Mr. Gough 
said : 

"Men became leading reformers who were not qualified by 
experience, or training, or education, to lead, and out of them 
a class sprung up who became dictatorial, and sometimes in- 
solent. Irreligious men insulted in some instances ministers of 
religion who had been hard workers for temperance, reformed 
drunkards sneered at those who had never been intemperate, 
as if former degradation was the only qualification for leader- 
ship. . . . Any remonstrance was construed at once into 
opposition to the cause itself, rather than to their methods. 
. . . The temperance cause is not strictly a religious enter- 
prise, it is a secular movement; but the religious element in 
it is the measure of its success, and the absence of that element 
is its decay." ■ 

In the same connection he remarks : 

"I heard the Hon. Thomas Marshall, of Kentucky, make a 
ten-minute speech in the Broadway Tabernacle at the close of 
an address of mine, in which he said : ' Were this great globe 
one chrysolite, and I were offered the possession of it if I 
would drink one glass of brandy, I would refuse with scorn ; 
and I want no religion, I want the temperance pledge.' With 



1 " Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 497, 498, and 501. 



"footprints on the sands of time. 117 

that wonderful voice of his he thundered out ' We want no 
religion in this movement. Let it be purely secular, and keep 
religion where it belongs.' Poor Tom Marshall, with all his 
self-confidence, fell, and died at Poughkeepsie in clothes given 
him by Christian charity." 1 

Apropos, the writer heard this same gifted man 
lecture on temperance one evening in New Haven, 
Conn., when he was so drunk he could not stand. 
He half sat to steady himself upon a table which 
served for a desk, swinging one leg as he hiccoughed 
out his sentences, brilliant as the rainbow. Presently, 
he lost his balance, and fell over the front of the plat- 
form to the floor four feet below, with the table piled 
on top of him. The fall sobered Marshall. He reas- 
cended the platform imperturbable and erect as a 
grenadier and continued his lecture ! The object- 
lesson was more effective than the address. Personal 
piety would have saved the eloquent Kentuckian. 

The Washingtonians accused Gough of a further 
offense. He advocated a recourse to law r — not then 
nor for long years afterwards, with any immediate 
purpose to apply it, but as a right within the legiti- 
mate scope of the State. He would occasionally 
utter sentences like these: 

" Our work has been very much like a game of ten-pins. 
We have been very busy in picking up the pins, but directly 
we set them up the liquor-seller has begun rolling the ball to 
knock them down again. We have picked up the pins and 
said, ' It is a good work to set them up ' ; but the ball came 
rolling in again, and knocked them down in every direction. 



1 " Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 497, 498, and 501. 



II.8 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

We have buried the dead wood, and new pins have been 
produced, and the game has gone on. But the cry has gone 
forth, it has gathered strength, and by-and-by it will be thun- 
dered in the ears of the Legislature, ' Stop that ball I'" 1 

To the Moral Suasionists such utterances were 
gall and wormwood. What fools men are — how 
blind when they have an opinion to maintain, or a 
prejudice to defend, or a party to serve! As though 
any weapon, every weapon should not be welcomed 
in such a war as this against intemperance! 

Mr. Gough's popularity was now a source of dis- 
comfort to the antiquated reformers, who refused to 
go on and up to higher ground. They circulated 
stories to his detriment. One whom he had nursed 
through delirium tremens wrote a scurrilous pamphlet, 
entitled " Goughiana," moved to it by so-called tem- 
perance people. This was given to the public some- 
times at the doors of Washingtonian halls. The 
orator was twitted with being a temperance man for 
" revenue only," his very fees being grudged him — 
although they were small enough in those days, 
heaven knows! The profits, when he lectured, were 
large. They went into the treasury of the cause. In 
1846 his personal receipts only averaged $20.52, and 
he always paid his own traveling and hotel expenses. 2 
To the lecturer who received only $3 or $5, this 
looked extravagant. One Washingtonian newspaper 
assumed to fix the maximum rate for such lectures 
for all time to come. " Anything above $5," said this 
political economist, " is too much, and only tempts 



1 " Platform Echoes," p. 618. 2 '* Autobiography," p. 247. 



"FOOTPRINTS ON THE SANDS OF TIME. 119 

unprincipled and selfish men to advocate temperance 
for the sake of money." ' 

Mr. Gough was unnecessarily sensitive to these 
shafts. Criticisms of his manner (easily caricatured) 
always annoyed him. But taunts that touched char- 
acter, as we have remarked in the previous chapter, 
hurt him beyond most men. No doubt, his remem- 
brance of the past, of what he had been and done, 
aggravated this weakness. He was lacking in self- 
esteem, and had no vanity. Nevertheless, too often 
for comfort, he wore his heart upon his sleeve for 
daws to peck at. 

With the bitter came the sweet, mingled as usual 
in life's mysterious cup. His fame went on rising. 
His lectures were ovations. Friends, good and true, 
rallied to his side. He was a king of hearts as well 
as of the platform. Tens of thousands already dated 
the commencement of a new life from one or another 
of his addresses. 

In January, 1846, Mr. Gough was invited to Vir- 
ginia. Richmond, Petersburg, Portsmouth, and Nor- 
folk were his centers of work, though other towns 
were touched. In the latter town he saw what he 
had never seen before — a slave sold at auction, and 
thus describes the occurrence: 

" Passing through the market, I saw a crowd surrounding a 
middle-aged colored woman who stood on a barrel, the auc- 
tioneer below her. I stopped to hear : ■ Two hundred and thirty 
dollars — two — thirty, thirty, thirty, going ; two — thirty, going, 
going gone!' Yes! there stood a woman, one of God's 



1 Lyman Abbott, in his Introduction to " Platform Echoes," 
p. 41. 



120 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

creatures, a wife and mother, with arms folded and the tears 
rolling silently down her cheeks, as she quietly and meekly 
turned at the bidding of the men who surrounded her, to show 
her arms, her shape, her breast, her teeth, — till the sale was 
accomplished, and the poor creature stepped down from her 
position before the crowd, — transferred from one owner to 
another, body, mind, and soul for two hundred and thirty 
dollars. I turned and said to a friend : ' That's the most damna- 
ble sight ever seen in a Christian country/ I was told I must 
not say that, and was hastened away." l 

Later in this same summer of 1846, Mr. Gough re- 
ceived an invitation to give ten lectures in Lynchburg, 
Va., signed by the Mayor and one hundred other citi- 
zens. In the evening after the first address, he was 
given a mock serenade in front of the hotel at eleven 
o'clock at night. Some of the party were arrested 
for disturbing the peace. Upon hearing in the morn- 
ing that four of them were to be tried at the court- 
house, he started for that building; was intercepted 
by a mob; came near being torn in pieces as an 
Abolitionist; was forbidden to speak again in Lynch- 
burg; avowed his purpose to lecture on temperance 
that very night; abashed the crowd by his firm 
attitude, and managed to retreat from the scene 
unhurt. 

Night came. The church was packed. Every one 
expected an outbreak — but as Disraeli used to say, 
" 'Tis the unexpected that happens." The orator en- 
tered through a window. He seated himself. Prayer 
was offered. The chairman, a well-known clergyman 
of the town, introduced him. He rose and came 



1 "Autobiography," p. 213. 



u FOOTPRINTS ON THE SANDS OF TIME." 121 

forward amid suppressed excitement. Entirely self- 
possessed, he said: 

" I wish you to hear me patiently before you decide what 
to do with me. I am ready to leave your city to-night by the 
12 o'clock canai-boat, or I will stay and fulfill my engagement. 
I was invited here by a committee of one hundred of your citi- 
zens, headed by the Mayor, to deliver ten lectures on temper- 
ance. On Sunday night, I asked for arguments on the other 
side, and got them — a brass horn, a tin-pan, an old fiddle, a 
triangle, a piece of sheet-iron, and one man apparently hired 
to swear for the occasion, who did his work faithfully. These 
arguments were almost as good as I expected. I have been 
threatened with whipping, with being run into the river, with 
vitriol in my face, and I have been called an Abolitionist. Now, 
just hear me while I say that there is no gentleman here whose 
opinion is worth having, who would not despise me heartily if 
I were not an Abolitionist. You all know I am, and you knew 
it when you sent for me. But you engaged me to speak on 
temperance, and I came for that purpose. I have not spoken 
of your 'peculiar institution' in public, whatever I may have 
thought of it. You have introduced the subject, not I, and I 
should receive and merit your contempt if I swallowed my 
principles, and told a lie to curry your favor. " 

This manly preface completely won the audience, 
which voted overwhelmingly that he should stay. 
The remaining lectures were given, and did much 
good, hundreds signing the pledge. 

While in Virginia, Mr. Gough had an attack of 
brain fever, the result of incessant work, super- 
imposed upon the nervous prostration brought on the 
preceding autumn by the adventure in New York. 
Before leaving the State he addressed several large 



* 'Autobiography," p. 218. 



122 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

gatherings of the colored people. In one of their 
churches in Richmond he spoke to 2,500 of them. 
There they sat — so black that one could not have 
seen them had they closed their eyes ! Turning to a 
clerical friend, Gough asked: 

" How shall I talk to them ? " 

"Just as you would to white folks," was the 
answer. 

He did, and found them like any other audience, 
only more emotional. 

" I said something of heaven," remarked Mr. 
Gough, "and a tall negro rose and commenced a 
song. There was a chorus: 

" I'm bound for de land of Canaan, 
Come, go along with me ; 
We'll all pass over Jordan 
And sound the jubilee. 

M Den we shall see Jesus — 
Come, go along with me ; 
We're all gwine home together, 
And will sound the jubilee/' 

" I am afraid to say how many verses they sang — it 
seemed like a dozen, and I had quite a rest. Just as 
I was resuming my speech, a man rose near the pul- 
pit, and said: 

" ' Bredren, just look at me. Here is a nigger dat 
doesn't own hisself. I belong to Massa Carr, bless 
de Lord ! Yes, bredren, dis poor ole body belongs to 
Massa Carr; but my soul is the freeman of de Lord 
Jesus ! ' " » 



1 M Autobiography," p. 219. 



" FOOTPRINTS ON THE SANDS OF TIME." 123 

Gough adds: " The effect was magical, and the 
whole andience shouted: 'Amen!' ' Glory!' i Bless de 
Lord! ' I took the opportunity to say: 

" ' There is not a drunkard in the city can say 
that!'" » 

Although he had seen slavery in its mildest aspect, 
the Northerner faced homeward hating the system 
more than ever. 

An interesting and important part of Mr. Gough's 
work in these days was the talking to children. This 
is partly an art, partly a gift. There is danger of 
talking too high or else of talking too low. In the 
one case, they lose interest; in the other, they lose 
respect for the speaker. Mr. Gough was never hap- 
pier than when before such an audience. He was a 
great boy himself and understood smaller boys. His 
graphic mannerisms, anecdotes, mimicry, always 
won the children, who were among his most enthusi- 
astic auditors. He organized thousands and thou- 
sands of them into cold-water armies and similar tem- 
perance bodies. 

In a characteristic passage he remarks: 

" I have been often touched by the sorrows of the drunkard's 
child. Pitiful little things they are sometimes. I was asked 
by a gentleman at whose house I was dining in Washington, in 
the 'forties, What was the most pitiful sight I ever saw ? 
After a little thought, I said : * An old child ; a child with 
wrinkles in its face, that is not yet in its teens ; a child made 
old by hard usage ; whose brow is furrowed by the plowshare 
of sorrow ; — that is one of the most pitiful sights on earth.' " * 

Mr. Gough's record for the five years commencing 



1 " Autobiography/' p. 219. 2 M Autobiography," p. 226. 



124 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

with 1847 an d ending with 1852, was one of continu- 
ous lecturing through a dozen States, relieved only 
by a few weeks' respite in each summer. He was 
the man with a single theme. He could say of it, 
however, as the Rev. John Pierpont did, when ac- 
cused on account of his earnestness for temperance 
of being a man of one idea, — " True, but its a whop- 
ping big one ! " Moreover, he varied it so entertain- 
ingly, applied it so practically, connected it with cur- 
rent affairs so powerfully, and so vitalized it with his 
own unique personality, that the people, like Oliver 
Twist, in Dickens's story, never stopped clamoring 
for " more." 

To follow Mr. Gough in his journeyings would be 
interesting, but endless as walking in the footsteps 
of Sue's "Wandering Jew." Out of his budget of 
experiences we select a few, as samples of the rest. 

On Thursday night, October 21, 1847, temperance 
was mobbed in Faneuil Hall. Liquor had been freely 
distributed during the day to " lewd fellows of the 
baser sort," two hundred of whom were gathered in 
a corner of the old hall, intent upon mischief. The 
floor of Faneuil Hall is not seated — the people stand. 
Hence, it will hold twice as many people as could 
otherwise get in ; and in a time of excitement, the 
crowd sways to and fro like a field of grain in a 
wind. 

This meeting was held by the Boston Temperance 
Society, whose president, Deacon Moses Grant, was 
in the chair. After a prayer, he introduced Mr. 
Gough. Instantly bedlam broke loose. Cheers and 
counter-cheers for Deacon Grant and for some local 
liquor-dealers, for Gough, and for Tom, Dick, and 



u FOOTPRINTS ON THE SANDS OF TIME. "' 125 

Harry, were given with a will. Catcalls, singing, 
and, in a few minutes dancing in a ring formed yon- 
der in rummy corner — made the " confusion worse 
confounded." 

In this din speaking was impossible. A shout 
could not be heard across the platform. Mr. Gough 
made pantomimic appeals — in vain. Whiskey had 
come in for the purpose of mobbing temperance out. 

Heated with liquor and instigated by their leaders, 
the rowdies passed from noise to violence. A rush 
was made for the platform, amid cries of " Throw 
Grant and Gough out of the window! " Members of 
the society on the platform met the assault resolutely, 
and pitched the assailants back to the floor as they 
climbed up. For a while a regular battle raged, with 
repeated assaults and repulses, as at Bunker Hill in 
'76 — Gough was reminded of the Diorama whose 
crank he used to turn. Then the gas was cut off. 
Hostilities were suspended, but the war of shouts and 
jeers and oaths went on. After an hour of chaos, a 
large posse of police came on the scene. Compara- 
tive order was restored; the gas was turned on; the 
officers retook their places, and Mr. Gough spoke to 
an accompaniment of outcries and interruptions which 
would have embarrassed most orators, but which he 
met, parried, and turned against the mob with inde- 
scribable sang froid. 

It was on this occasion that he told his famous 
stuttering story. One loafer, by his persistent inter- 
jections and profanity made himself a nuisance — all 
the more so, because a knot of rum-sellers under the 
gallery enjoyed the fun hugely and encouraged the 
fellow by laughing loudly at every impudent remark. 



126 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

Advancing to the edge of the platform, and address- 
ing him personally, Gough said : 

" My friend, I pity you ; for you are doing the dirty 
work of men who dare not do it themselves. You are 
serving your masters and employers, who stand here 
in this audience encouraging you in doing what you 
would never dream of were you not set on by others. 
You look Jike a sensible man, and I should like to tell 
you a story of which you remind me." 

The man broke in with, " Let's have the story." 

" Well, a certain merchant who was a sad stam- 
merer, had one joke which he related to every one who 
would listen to him. His clerks had repeatedly heard 
it and were familiar with it. One day, a stranger 
came into the store. The merchant accosted him 
with : 

" ' Can you tell me wh-why it was th-h-at B-B-B- 
why it wa-was th-that B-B- wh-wh-why it was that 
B-B ' 

" Seeing his employer's difficulty, one of the clerks 
said, ' He wants to know if you can tell him why 
Balaam's ass spoke.' 

" i Yes,' replied the stranger, ' I guess I can. I 
reckon Balaam was a stuttering man, and got his ass 
to do his talking for him! ' " 

The man laughed loudly with the rest, and soon 
left the hall. 

This was the last time temperance was mobbed in 
Faneuil Hall; which, however, was the cradle of 
mobs, as well as of liberty, when the Abolitionists 
occupied it. 

Mr. Gough's nervous temperament subjected him 
to stage fright, of which he was the lifelong victim. 



u FOOTPRINTS ON THE SANDS OF TIME." 127 

Fortunately, it always preceded and never accom- 
panied his efforts. When he was announced to give 
his one hundred and sixty-first lecture in Boston, he 
had an attack of this kind which seriously frightened 
good Deacon Grant. Gough shook with apprehen- 
sion all day — "he could not speak — would surely 
break down — had nothing to say — was talked out too 
dry even for a temperance man." 

At night he baulked worse than ever — insisted that 
speaking was an impossibility. He told the Deacon 
flatly that he would not go to the meeting. After 
much persuasion he did go, and was introduced. He 
commenced thus : 

" Ladies and gentlemen : I have nothing to say. It is not 
my fault that I am here to night. I almost wish I could feel as 
a gentleman in New York told the people he did when he 
addressed them — ' I am never afraid of an audience,' said he, 
* I imagine the people are so many cabbage heads.' I wish I 
could feel so 

" But no, I do not wish that. When I look into your faces, 
an assemblage of rational and immortal beings, and remember 
how drink has debased and dragged down the loftiest and 
noblest minds, I cannot feel so." 

Having gotten an initial thought, he was off, and 
spoke gloriously for an hour and a half — a human 
cyclone, with tornado sauce. 

When he sat down, Deacon Grant said rather 
sharply : 

" Don't you ever frighten me so again ! " ■ 

In October, 1848, Mr. Gough's father arrived in 
America, his son having sent for him. For years the 



"Autobiography," pp. 235, 236. 



128 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

two had lost sight and knowledge of one another. 
A copy of his son's "Autobiography/' had fallen into 
the father's hands. In this way a correspondence 
was reopened, and now they were together — a meet- 
ing both sad and joyful. The pale, martyr face of the 
wife and mother looked down upon the two, and 
made a pathetic third. And other ghosts of memory 
and change revisited " the glimpses of the moon." 
Henceforth until his death, in 187 1, at the age of 94, 
the elder Gough was supported by the younger. 

John and Mary removed from Roxbury to Boston 
in 1847. * n x ^4^ they wearied of the city, purchased 
lands in Boylston, Mary's old home, and dear to John 
as the place where they met ; and here at " Hillside," 
five miles from Worcester, they resided ever after 
when at home. 

'Tis a quiet, restful place. The surrounding 
country is diversified. The house, a two-storied, 
roomy building, surmounted by a cupola, stands at 
the head o a long approach, after the English 
fashion. Here, beyond the easy reach of men, but 
accessible to those who wished to find them, the 
Goughs browsed at delightful intervals in their busy 
life ; and while Mary turned farmer, John went to 
grass, like Nebuchadnezzar, or read yonder in the 
cosy library, whose shelves he soon peopled with a 
choice selection of 3,000 books. As an old book- 
binder, Mr. Gough was specially fond of fine bind- 
ings. Many of his books he bound himself as a 
pastime. His tastes led him in study to history, biog- 
raphy, essays, and art. In these departments, there- 
fore, his library was exceptionally rich. The duties 
which called this couple away from " Hillside' to 



" FOOTPRINTS ON THE SANDS OF TIME." 129 

endure the discomforts of travel, the bare rooms of 
hotels, and the fatigue of life on the platform, 
had need to take sharp hold upon the conscience 
and the heart, else had they not budged from their 
bucolics. 

Mr. Gough's habit at this period was to give, not a 
single lecture in a place, as in Lyceum days, but con- 
tinuous courses of lectures ; for instance, five at 
Rochester, eighteen at Buffalo, ten at Detroit. The 
number of lectures in any course was a matter of 
agreement. The average fee was less than $25 a lec- 
ture through the whole of the lecturer's first temper- 
ance decade. 

In the fall of 1850 the Goughs spent some time in 
Canada, courses of twelve lectures being given in 
Montreal, eight in Quebec, six in Kingston, ten in 
Toronto, and seven in Hamilton. At several of 
these towns there were English garrisons. These 
Mr. Gough was invited to address. His father's long 
and honorable connection with the army drew his 
heart out toward these men, many of whom signed 
the pledge in response to his appeals — and kept it, 
too, as he learned long years afterwards. One day, in 
Boston, Deacon Grant asked Gough to call upon two 
young ladies who desired to see him — but let him tell 
about it : 

" I went to the house, was shown into a room, and received 
by a young lady who motioned me to a seat. As I sat there 
for a few moments waiting for her to speak to me, I gave a 
glance around the room. There were evidences of better days 
4 lang syne,' though I shivered, for there was no fire in the 
grate, and the weather was cold. The young lady spoke : 

" ' Mr. Gough, my sister intended to meet you with me, but 

9 



130 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

she has sprained her ankle and is unable to see you. My 
mother has been confined to her room for many weeks, and to 
her bed for some days. Oh, sir, it is hard for a daughter to 
speak of a father's intemperance; but what can I do ? I have 
sent for you as a last resort. My father is good and kind when 
free from drink ; but when under its influence is cruel — he 
actually robs us of the common necessaries of life — and I 
would not ask you to sit in a cold room, had we materials for a 
fire.' 

" I involuntarily glanced at the piano. She noticed it, and 
said quickly : 

" ' You may think that pride and poverty go together ; and 
they do. You wonder why I do not sell my piano. I cannot 
sell it. My father bought it for me on my birthday years ago. 
It is like an old friend. I learned to play on it. Mother loves 
to hear the tunes that remind us of days gone by — I fear for 
ever. My father has asked me to sell it ; and suppose I did ? 
It would but procure him the means of intoxication for a time, 
and we should be little better off.' 

" I left them. Deacon Grant sent them provisions and fuel. 
In a day or two I called again. The father was there. After 
a short conversation, he said, to my surprise : 

" ' Mr. Gough, have you a pledge with you ? ' 

"' I have.' 

" ■ I will sign it.' 

" I immediately produced it ; he at once wrote his name, and 
stood up, free ! I watched the young girl, when he said ' I will 
sign.' She clasped her hands, and stood with eager eyes and 
lips apart, watching the pen. She seemed breathlessly anxious 
till the name was recorded ; — then she sprang to him, twined 
her arms as well as she could around his neck (she was a little 
creature); and oh, how she clung to his breast. Then, unclasp- 
ing her hands, she said : 

" ' Oh, father, I'm so proud of you. Mr. Gough, he has 
signed it ; and he'll never break it, I know him ; he'll never 
break it. No, no, my father will live a sober man. Oh, father ! 
Oh, father!' 



"footprints on the sands of time." 131 

" The tears were raining down her cheeks, as he passed his 
hand caressingly over her face. Then she said : 

" 4 Father, you spoke of selling the piano. We can sell it 
to-morrow, and what it brings will pay what we owe, and we 
shall have something to start with again. Sha'n't we, father ? ' 

" Yes, that poor heart was comforted. Now she would give 
up her piano — cheerfully. Why ? Because her father would 
live a sober man." 1 

Early in 1851 Mr. and Mrs. Gough set out for Cin- 
cinnati, Ohio. It was in the early days of railroads. 
These annihilators of time and distance were as yet 
infrequent. The stage-coach and Hie steamboat, 
beyond the Atlantic seaboard, were still the reliance 
of passengers. At Cumberland, Md., our couple had 
to " stage it " to Pittsburgh, over a road deep with 
winter mud and slush. They intended to take the 
boat at Pittsburgh down the Ohio to Cincinnati. 
Opportunities for work unexpectedly opened in Pitts- 
burgh, however, and detained them two weeks there 
and in Alleghany City, across the river ; and sixteen 
lectures resulted in the securing of between four and 
five thousand signatures to the pledge. 

Thence they proceeded to Cincinnati, where they 
met and became intimate with that patriarch of tem- 
perance, Dr. Lyman Beecher, then at the head of 
Lane Seminary. 

Mr. Gough spoke to the usual crowds. " Several 
times," he writes, " I was compelled to obtain an en- 
trance to the church by the window. Once a ladder 
was placed against a window back of the pulpit. I 
hesitated as the feat of climbing seemed dangerous. 



1 "Autobiography," pp. 263-265. 



132 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

Dr. Lyman Beecher said : i I'll go first ; follow me.* 
Encouraged by his success, I ventured. It was 
comical to see the doctor drive his hat more firmly on 
his head as he prepared for the ascent ; but, taking a 
firm hold, up he went, chuckling to himself all the 
way." ■ 

Wesley Chapel, the largest audience-room in the 
city, was overfilled more than twenty times! "I 
spoke also," says the lecturer, " to firemen, to chil- 
dren, to ladies, and visited schools. At Wesley Col- 
lege I made an address, and was asked by a young 
lady to write the pledge in her i album ' ; I did so ; 
when another and another brought albums — till I had 
written in one hundred and forty-three of these 
books. I often in my travels see one of these albums 
with the writing in it : and it recalls very pleasantly 
the delightful afternoon I spent at Wesley College." 2 

Later in 1851 Mr. Gough delivered a course of nine 
lectures in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Here he addressed 
a muster of the famous Forty-Second Regiment of 
Highlanders. In referring to it, he says : 

" In passing through the city I had noticed a sign hung up 
in front of a low drinking-house with a daub of a picture, rep- 
resenting a half-intoxicated soldier in the Highland costume, a 
bottle in one hand and a pipe in the other, with the words 
'The Jolly Highland Soldier,' in red letters beneath. In the 
course of my talk to the soldiers, I told them what I had seen, 
and asked them if the publican dared to exhibit the picture of 
a drunken lawyer, or doctor, or minister, or even a' Jolly High- 
land Officer ? No' He associated the Highland soldier with 
drunkenness. It was an insult to them and to the 'garb of old 



1 "Autobiography," p. 271. 2 'Autobiography," p. 271. 



" FOOTPRINTS ON THE SANDS OF TIME." 133 

Gaul,' of which they were so proud. The next day the sign 
disappeared ! A deputation of the men had waited on the 
proprietor with a very emphatic request that the offensive sign 
should be taken down." ■ 

In the course of an address at Colburg, Canada, the 
orator made a violent gesture and t — r — r — r — r — rip 
went his coat down the back from collar to skirt. 
Every one laughed but the speaker. He did not see 
the fun — at the moment. He could not speak without 
gesture. Now he did not dare to move his arms, for 
then the garment fell forward most absurdly. That 
torn coat quite spoiled his speech. Before he left 
town he was presented with a new one ; whereupon 
he said : 

" I thank you for your gift ; and now as this is the 
result of my accident, I wish I had torn my trousers, 
too ! " 

On another occasion, when he was speaking in the 
Church of Dr. Beman, in Troy, N. Y. (a giant of the 
pulpit, physically as well as mentally), a gas-burner 
began to blow. The good clergyman rose softly and 
stepped behind Gough to turn it down, just as he 
threw back his clenched fist; Dr. Beman received the 
blow full in the face. When Gough apologized, he 
said : 

" Remember, sir, you are the first man who ever 
struck me with impunity." 

These were the high-water days of temperance. 
Since 1843, when Gough signed the pledge, there had 
been a revolution in public sentiment. Drunkenness 
was no longer the rule, nor even the fashion. Liquor- 



1 "Autobiography/' pp. 272, 273. 



134 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

selling was disreputable. Bars were screened. Ob- 
trusive decanters were banished from private buffets. 
It was not high noon ; but it was 10.30 o'clock by the 
pointers on the dial of reform, and the " good time 
coming " seemed destined to chime twelve within 
another decade. 

In a free country social reforms are certain to work 
into politics. 'Tis thus that results are funded, put 
out at interest, and made to yield a revenue of right- 
eousness. So now the temperance convictions of the 
people were stereotyped into statutes. Local-option 
laws were in force in Pennslyvania — had been since 
1843. In 1851, Neal Dow, a name synonymous with 
prohibition, pushed the legislature of Maine to adopt 
" the Maine Law," so-called, a law which has been 
the pattern of prohibitory legislation ever since. 
Massachusetts and Vermont passed similar statutes 
in 1852. 

It would be folly to ascribe these successes to any 
one reformer. The sources of a river lie in many 
springs. Multitudes of good men and true (some of 
them " mute, inglorious Miltons," whose names are 
" unhonored and unsung"), contributed to swell the 
temperance tide. Among them all, it is safe to say 
that John B. Gough stands preeminent. His ad- 
vocacy made an epoch. He transferred temperance 
from the schoolhouses to the churches. He attracted 
to it influential names which had looked askance and 
stood aloof. He made it popular before vast assem- 
blages, drawn together to laugh at Gough's stories, 
but taught before they were dismissed to hate the 
drink. 

'Tis true that he did not then, nor until a good deal 



"footprints on the sands of time." 135 

later, set as much value as others did upon prohibi- 
tory law. He assented to the principle of prohibi- 
tion. His motto was, '* Kindness, sympathy, and 
persuasion for the victim — for the tempter, law/' 
But he emphasized the first part, rather than the 
second half, of this motto. There were two reasons 
for this : one, philosophical ; the other, tempera- 
mental. Mr. Gough was a good deal more of a phi- 
losopher than he got credit for being. He understood 
America and England. He knew that in either 
country a statute is not worth the paper it is printed 
upon unless it has behind it a friendly and executive 
public opinion. Law cannot execute itself. If the 
law officers evade it, and the people hold it in disfavor, 
of what use is the most wholesome statute ? The 
laws against theft, arson, adultery, murder, are meas- 
urably enforced, because these offenses are under the 
frown of public opinion. 

Hence he felt free to follow the temperamental im- 
pulses of his nature, and go on with his special call- 
ing, viz., the creation of temperance sentiment. This 
would not only make temperance law, but enforce it. 
A great speaker, he naturally gave himself, perhaps 
too onesidedly for awhile, to moral advocacy. It 
may be, also, that he set his mark too high, when he 
said : " Do not expect prohibition until you have 
four-fifths of the community on your side." At any 
rate, there must be a good working majority for pro- 
hibition before it can be made operative. Meantime, 
Gouges example is a good one to follow — work for 
the creation of that majority. 



PART VI. 

The First Visit to Great Britain 



" England, with all thy faults I love thee still." 
Cowper, The Task, Book II. 



THE D^BUT IN LONDON. 

Forty years ago news did not travel quite as 
rapidly as it does in these electric days ; but it went 
fast enough to carry the name and fame of John B. 
Gough to those who were stationed on the watch- 
towers of public observation across the sea. Nor were 
American books and speakers as highly appreciated 
over there then as they are now. It was a flattering 
tribute to the ability of the Yankee reformer that the 
leaders of the temperance cause in Great Britain so 
quickly noticed the remarkable results attendant upon 
his career three thousand miles away ; and credit- 
able, also, to their own perspicacity. 

The Macedonian cry, " Come over and help us," 
had been echoing from the other side of the Atlantic 
and sounding in Mr. Gough's ears for months. To 
these appeals he was long deaf. He was happy and 
useful here ; why go there ? Could the need be 
greater abroad than it was at home ? Besides, with 
habitual modesty, he thought his style of speaking 
would not please the English and Scotch people. 
They liked argument ; he was intuitional. He did 
not realize the splendor of his own powers. What 
men do with ease they seldom value. 

For these and other reasons Mr. Gough replied to 



140 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

the British overtures, as the Shunammite did to 
Elisha, "I dwell among mine own people." 

There is great virtue in persistency — and it is an 
English virtue. The more he declined the more 
pressing they became. Accordingly, like some young 
ladies who say " Yes" to ardent swains, " to get rid 
of them," Mr. Gough, in the spring of 1853, mailed an 
agreement to visit Great Britain and spend the summer 
vacation there, provided the London Temperance 
League, whose committee had been in correspond- 
ence with him, would agree to pay Mrs. Gough's and 
his own expenses to and fro, including one week in 
Paris and another down at Sandgate. He thought 
this proposition would not be accepted — further proof 
of his modesty. It was, though, and eagerly. Thus 
it was arranged that he should have a summer trip 
abroad, and pay for it by six weeks' service to the 
League. 

.The mercurial reformer had scarcely signed the 
agreement before his heart failed him — he could not, 
would not go — he was sure the Britons would dislike 
him — failure was foreordained. Dr. Lyman Beecher 
was visiting the Goughs at " Hillside" at the time, 
and he laughed at and scolded John (as he familiarly 
called him) by turns. 

"Very well," said Gough ; "I will go, if I must ; 
but I've borrowed $250 to make myself independent 
of the League ; and if I do fail in my first speech, I 
shall come back by the next steamer ! " 

Deacon Grant, too, and other friends, encouraged 
the despondent advocate — and "Mary" was at his side. 

They sailed in the steamer America on the 20th of 
July, and reached Liverpool on the 30th, after a 



THE DEBUT IN LONDON. J4T 

pleasant voyage, during which the wife was seasick 
while the husband was not. On the tug which took 
them ashore they met a deputation of temperance 
friends, headed by Smith Harrison, Esq., a Liverpool 
merchant, who gave the visitors an English welcome, 
and escorted them five miles out of the city to the 
residence of a wealthy Quaker, Charles Wilson, where 
they slept that night in the prophet's chamber, 
senenaded by thrushes on the lawn, and couched in 
delicious peace. 

The next day, August ist, they took the train for 
London, over the Northwestern Railway, which runs 
through a picturesque country, typically English — 
" rich, green foliage ; hedge rows, new to American 
eyes ; clumps of trees artistically planted ; agricul- 
ture in perfection ; magnificent mansions of landed 
proprietors ; cottage homes of laborers ; and here 
and there a half-ruined castle, or the romantic re- 
mains of some fine old abbey." After four or five 
hours spent in the enjoyment of this beautiful pano- 
rama as it unrolled before their eyes — an experience 
" new and yet familiar " to John, new and unfamilar 
to Mary, but " linked sweetness long drawn out" to 
both — the travelers whirled into London. 

Here, again, they were met, warmly greeted, and 
carried to the house of George Cruikshank, between 
whom and John Gough (as the English preferred to 
call him) in was a case of love at first sight. Mr. 
Cruikshank was then in the fulness of his fame as an 
artist, and was equal master of pencil and brush. As 
a caricaturist without a rival in his day, he displayed 
his fertile imagination and comic humor in illustra- 
tions each one of which would create a laugh under 



142 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

the ribs of death. He was, withal, a great friend of 
temperance, and let the fact be known at a time when 
temperance and fanaticism were synonymous. His 
moral courage equaled his genius. Gough and 
Cruikshank were drawn together by kindred tastes 
and feelings. One was the Gough of art, the other 
was the Cruikshank of speech. Gough owned and 
showed at " Hillside " the finest collection of Cruik- 
shankiana extant — more extensive even than the one 
in the British Museum. 

It had been arranged that Mr. Gough should enter 
at once upon a temperance campaign. He w T as to 
speak first in Exeter Hall, London, on Tuesday even- 
ing, August 2d, the day after his arrival in London — 
pretty quick work ! After this the list of engage- 
ments was continuous through the month, with the 
Sundays alone set aside for rest. 

The Executive Committee of the London Temper- 
ance League had engaged Mr. Gough on his Amer- 
ican reputation. Not one of them had heard him. 
But they wisely determined that the responsibility of 
failure, if failure there should be, should rest upon the 
orator, rather than upon the committee. They, there- 
fore, advertised him magnificently — sent his "Autobio- 
graphy " out by thousands of copies — arranged a 
course of lectures on Gough's life and mission 
by a competent English speaker, enlisted the press, 
got the ear of litterateurs^ secured the aid of the clergy 
— and, in brief, stood the United Kingdom on tiptoe 
with expectation. Failure in such circumstances 
meant ruin — success insured limitless opportunities 
for usefulness. 

How did Mr. Gough meet these high expectations? 



THE DEBUT IN LONDON. 143 

To the surprise of the Leaguers, he did not seem to 
understand the situation. For example, he passed 
the whole of the 2d of August in riding about London 
on top of an omnibus, pointing out to " Mary " the 
Bank, the Mansion House, St. Paul's, Temple Bar, 
the Strand, Fleet street, Westminster Abbey, the 
Houses of Parliament, and a hundred other objects of 
interest as the 'bus rolled along ; in admiring a Punch- 
and-Judy show (of all things in the world); in undig- 
nified explorations and exclamations, which quite 
horrified the staid escort provided by the League — 
and this when he was to put his reputation to the 
touch that very night, "to gain or lose it all." There 
was consternation among the Leaguers. They did 
not know what to make of this " boy let loose from 
school " — nor of his female pal. They would have 
been better pleased had their protege shut himself up 
in serious preparation for the ordeal that awaited him 
— and them as his sponsors. 

Gentlemen, calm yourselves ! Your orator, had he 
been the profoundest of philosophers, could not have 
hit upon a better method than the one he used. His 
facts were all in hand. His speech was in his mind 
and heart. What he needed was recreation, the 
husbanding of mental and moral vitality, until he 
could pour it out in the molten lava of volcanic 
speech. Those loiterings amused him, and kept his 
thoughts off of himself and the impending debut ; no 
matter, therefore, about the annoyance of the com- 
mittee — they were not to lose or save the day. 

Exeter Hall, where Mr. Gough had consented to 
begin his English work, was the headquarters of phi- 
lanthropy in Great Britain. It occupied in London 



144 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

the position held in Boston by Faneuil Hall. The 
foremost orators of the Anglo-Saxon race in the nine- 
teenth century had taught its echoes the sweetest of 
all music — eloquent human speech. Here Brougham, 
Canning, George Thompson, Henry Vincent, Daniel 
O'Connell, and John Bright, had addressed popular 
parliaments, to whose behests the official assembly 
yonder in Westminster had been compelled to bow. 
The air of the place was suggestive of the loftiest 
names and aims in contemporaneous history — would 
stifle a small man and inspire a great one. 

Exeter Hall stands on the Strand, is entered through 
a spacious door, beyond which a wide stairway leads 
into the auditorium, where 3,000 people may be com- 
fortably seated. On that 2d day of August, 1853, 
the crowd began to gather as early as 4 o'clock p.m. 
At 6 o'clock the doors were opened ; the hall was 
filled in five minutes. At 8 o'clock, when the meeting 
began, thousands were being turned away. 

It was what the journals called a " respectable " 
audience — meaning by that term that it was com- 
posed of prominent and influential men and women 
— and this although London in August is as empty 
of the " respectable '' classes as any great American 
city would be at the same season. Many had come 
into town for the occasion. Representatives of the 
best brain and heart of Great Britain were in the 
seats and on the platform. The skill and suc- 
cess of the Executive Committee as advertisers 
were abundantly vindicated. Now how about the 
orator ? 

J. S. Buckingham, the president of the League, was 
in the chair. As the speaker came forward he was 



THE D^BUT IN LONDON. 145 

received with a tumult of cheers — which Gough said 
" took his breath away." He adds : 

" While Mr. Buckingham was making the introductory 
speech I reasoned within myself ' Here are 3,000 men and 
women wrought up to excitement and surely doomed to disap- 
pointment. They expect a flight of sky-rockets, and I cannot 
provide it. No man can address an audience like this success- 
fully while in such a state. Something must be done.' When 
I was introduced I began to speak very tamely, knowing that 
unless they were let down no living man could speak up to 
their enthusiasm for an hour and a half ; so I continued in that 
vein until I saw the enthusiasm fade away into disappointment. 
Then I heard one on the platform groan audibly 'Ah ! — h — h ! ' 
another sighed loud enough to be heard — ' This'll never do for 
London/ Then I commenced in real earnest, laid hold of my 
theme, and did the best I could." l 

'Tis interesting to compare Mr. Gough's account 
with the utterances of other competent judges. The 
Rev. Dr. Campbell, the leading nonconformist of the 
day, declares : 

" Great as had been the expectations, Mr. Gough surpassed 
them all. The vast multitude he swayed as with an enchanter's 
wand. As he willed, it was moved to laughter or melted into 
tears." 

Newman Hall, who sat on the platform, a close 
observer, said : 

" Demosthenes could not have done more." 

The newspapers the next morning devoted pages 
to the speaker and the speech. As fair specimens of 



" Autobiography," p. 286. 
IO 



146 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

these descriptions, we quote two — the first from the 
British Banner : 

" Mr. Gough is a well-adjusted mixture of the poet, orator, 
and dramatist. His manner abounds in changes. The ab- 
sence of unmitigated vehemence is highly favorable to the 
economy of strength, and a large measure of repose prevades 
the whole exhibition. Resting himself, he gives rest to his 
audience, and hence both remain unwearied till the end. Mr. 
Gough gave no signs of fatigue last night. At the close of 
nearly an hour and forty minutes he seemed quite as fresh as 
when he began, and quite capable of continuing till midnight, 
cock-crowing, or morning! No heat even was apparent to 
us; perspiration was out of the question; the nandkerchief 
was never, that we observed, once in requisition throughout 
the whole of his surprising display. He resembled a clump of 
Highland heather under the blaze of a burning sun — as dry as 
powder ! It is as natural to him to speak — and that on a scale 
to be heard by the largest auditory — as to breathe. It ceases 
now to be a matter of astonishment that he makes so little of 
standing up to speak every night in succession, for weeks to- 
gether, and traveling for that purpose one or more hundreds of 
miles by day ! There is an utter absence of all mental pertur- 
bation; before he commences there seems no idea of his being 
about to do anything at all extraordinary, or, when he has 
finished, that anything extraordinary has been performed. It 
seems to be as much a matter of course as walking or running, 
sitting down or rising up. His self-command is perfect, and 
hence his control over an assembly is complete. Governing 
himself, he easily governs all around him. It was impossible 
for any man to have been more thoroughly at home than he was 
last night. Like a well-bred man, once on his feet, there was 
the absence alike of bashfulness and impudence. 

" The address was entirely without order of any sort — nay, 
for this the assembly was prepared at the outset by the inti- 
mation that he had never written and never premeditated a 
speech in his life ! Last night the address was a succession of 



THE DEBUT IN LONDON. 147 

pictures delivered in a manner the most natural, and hence, at 
one time, feeling was in the ascendency, and, at another, power. 
His gifts of mimicry seemed great; this perilous, though valu- 
able faculty, however, was but sparingly exercised. It is only 
as the lightning, in a single flash, iljumining all and gone, 
making way for the rolling peal and the falling torrent. 
Throughout the whole of last night he addressed himself to the 
fancy and to the heart. We cannot doubt, however, that Mr. 
Gough is in a very high degree capable of dealing with prin- 
ciples and of grappling with an adversary by way of argument, 
but he adopted a different, and, as we think, a much wiser 
course for a first appearance. The mode of address is one of 
which mankind will never tire till human nature becomes 
divested of its inherent properties. He recited a series of 
strikingly pertinent facts, all of which he set in beautiful pic- 
tures. Nothing could exceed the unity of the 'impression, 
while nothing could be more multifarious than the means em- 
ployed to effect it. It was a species of mortar-firing, in which 
old nails, broken bottles, chips of iron, and bits of metal, 
together with balls of lead — anything, everything partaking of 
the nature of a missile — was available. The compound mass 
was showered forth with resistless might and powerful execu- 
tion. The great idea, which was uppermost all the evening, 
was the evils of drinking ; and, under a deep conviction of that 
truth, every man must have left the assembly. 

u The conclusion to which we have come, then, is that the 
merits of Mr. Gough have been by no means overrated. In 
England he would take a stand quite as high as he has taken 
in the United States. There is no hazard now in saying that 
there will be no disappointment. He will nowhere fail to 
equal, if not to surpass, expectation; and his triumph will, 
among Englishmen, be all the more complete from the utter 
absence of all pretension. His air makes promise of noth- 
ing ; and hence all that is given is so much above the con- 
tract. It is impossible to conceive of anything more entirely 
free from empiricism. From first to last it is nature acting in 
one of her favorite sons. Oratorically considered, he is never 



148 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

at fault. While the vocable pronunciation, with scarcely an 
exception, is perfect, the elocutionary element is in every way 
worthy of it. He is wholly free, on the one hand, from heavy 
monotony, and, on the other, from ranting declamation, properly 
so-called. There is no mouthing — no stilted shouting. His 
whole speaking was eminently true ; there is nothing false either 
in tone or inflection ; and the same remark applies to emphasis. 
All is truth ; the result is undeviating pleasure and irresistible 
impression. His air is that of a man who never thought five 
minutes on the subject of public speaking ; but who surrenders 
himself to the guidance of his genius, while he ofttimes snatches 
a grace beyond the reach of art. 

" In Mr. Gough, however, there are far higher considerations 
than those of eloquence, We cannot close without adverting 
to the highest attribute of his speaking — it is prevaded by a 
spirit of religion. Not a word escapes him which is objection- 
able on that score. Other things being equal, this never fails 
to lift a speaker far above his fellows. In this respect, he is a 
pattern to temperance advocates. He did not, to be sure, 
preach Christianity ; that was not his business ; but the whole 
of his enchanting effusion was in harmony with its doctrines, 
always breathing its spirit, and occasionally paying it a natural 
and graceful tribute. At the close, in particular, that was 
strongly marked. He there stated that the temperance cause 
was the offspring of the Christian Church, adding that whatever 
was such was in its own nature immortal, and thence predict- 
ing the ultimate triumph of the cause in which he was em- 
barked." 

Our second extract is from the Weekly News, and is 
an equally excellent pen-portrait of the man and 
analysis of his power : 

" He is dressed in sober black; his hair is dark, and so is his 
face; but there is a muscular vigor in his frame, for which we 
were not prepared. We should judge Gough has a large 
share of the true elixir vita — animal spirits. His voice is one 



THE D^BUT IN LONDON. 149 

of great power and pathos, and he speaks without an effort. 
The first sentence, as it falls gently and easily from his lips, 
tells us that Gough has that true oratorical power which neither 
money, nor industry, nor persevering study can ever win. 
Like the poet, the orator must be born. You may take a man 
six feet high, he shall be good-looking, have a good voice, and 
speak English with a correct pronunciation ; you shall write 
for that man a splendid speech, you shall have him taught elo- 
cution by Mr. Webster — and yet you shall no more make that 
man an orator than, to use a homely phrase, you can ■ make a 
silk purse out of a sow's ear.' Gough is an orator born. Pope 
tells us he 'lisped in numbers,' and in his boyhood Gough 
must have had the true tones of the orator on his tongue. 
There was no effort — no fluster — all was easy and natural. He 
was speaking for the first time to a public meeting in his native 
land — speaking to thousands, who had come with the highest 
expectations, who expected much and required much — speak- 
ing by means of the press to the whole British public. Under 
such circumstances, occasional nervousness would have been- 
pardonable ; but, from the first, Gough was perfectly self- 
possessed. There are some men who have prodigious advan- 
tages on account of appearance alone. We think it was Fox 
who said, it was impossible for any one to be as wise as Thurlow 
looked. The great Lord Chatham was particularly favored by 
nature in this respect. In our own time, in the case of Lord 
Denman, we have seen how much can be done by means of a 
portly presence and a stately air. Gough has nothing of this. 
He is just as plain a personage as George Dawson, of Birming- 
ham, would be, if he were to cut his hair and shave off his 
mustache. But though we have named George Dawson, 
Gough does not speak like him, or any other living man. 
Gough is no servile copy, but a real original. We have no one 
in England we can compare him to. He seems to speak by 
inspiration — as the apostles spoke, who were commanded not 
to think beforehand what they should say. The spoken- word 
seems to come naturally — as air bubbles up from the bottom 
of the well. In what he said there was nothing new — there 



150 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

could be nothing new — the tale he told was old as the hills ; 
yet as he spoke an immense audience grew hushed and still, 
and hearts were melted, and tears glistened in female eyes, 
and that great human mass became knit together by a common 
spell. Disraeli says, ' Sir Robert Peel played upon the House 
of Commons as an old fiddle.' Gough did the same at Exeter 
Hall. At his bidding, stern, strong men, as well as sensitive 
women, wept or laughed — they swelled with indignation or 
desire. Of the various chords of human passion he was master. 
At times he became roused, and we thought how — 

11 ' In his ire Olympian Pericles 

Thundered and lightened, and all Hellas shook.' 

M At other times, in his delineation of American manners, he 
proved himself almost an equal of Silsbee. Off the stage we 
have nowhere seen a better mimic than Gough ; and this must 
give him great power, especially in circles where the stage is 
as much a terra incognita, as Utopia, or the Island of Laputa 
itself. We have always thought that a fine figure of Byron, 
where he tells us that he laid his hand upon the ocean's mane. 
Something of the same kind might be said to be applicable to 
Mr. Gough ; he seemed to ride upon the audience — to have 
mastered it completely to his will. He seemed to bestride it, 
as we could imagine Alexander bestriding Bucephalus. 

'* Gough spoke for nearly two hours. Evidently the audience 
could have listened, had he gone on till midnight. We often 
hear that the age of oratory has gone by, that the press super- 
sedes the tongue, that the appeal must henceforth be made to 
the reader in his study, not to the hearer in the crowded hall. 
There is much truth in that ; nevertheless, the true orator will 
always please his audience, and true oratory will never die." 

It is evident that the excursion of John Gough, on 
the top of the omnibus, his flirtations with Punch 
and Judy, and his boyish delight in it all, did not 



THE D£BUT IN LONDON. 151 

destroy his chances on that Tuesday night in Exeter 
Hall. 

We say to the apprehensive gentlemen of the Ex- 
ecutive Committee, as Deacon Grant did to Mr. 
Gough on the occasion referred to in a prior page — 

" Don't you ever scare us so again ! " 



II. 



"how dear to my heart are the scenes of my 
childhood." 

Three more monster meetings in London were 
addressed by Mr. Gough, another in Exeter Hall, 
and two in Whittington Club-Room, ere he entered 
the " provinces," as the the regions outside of the 
metropolis are indiscriminately named by our English 
cousins. 

London is England; Paris is France; Berlin is 
Germany; Vienna is Austria. There is no city in 
this country which dominates America. New York 
is the financial center; and a New York reputation 
in art or literature, is an " open sesame " across the 
continent. But great names are made without the 
indorsement of Manhattan Island. Gough himself is 
a case in point. Indeed, only one illustrious American 
speaker of the past generation had any connection 
with New York (Henry Ward Beecher), — and he 
preached in Brooklyn. 

Mr. Gough's London dibut preannounced him 
everywhere. Like Byron, he awoke to find himself 
famous, on the morning after that event. Traveling 
towards Scotland, he spoke at various places en route, 
and at Galashiels, in the neighborhood of Melrose 
and Abbotsford, faced his first audience of Scotsmen, 



"how dear to my heart," etc. 153 

after the lecture eating salmon " caught in the Tweed," 
and hearing " Burns's songs sung in the pure Scotch 
dialect." At Glasgow he spoke to thousands in the 
City Hall. It was not until the 1st of September, 
that he appeared before the people of Edinburgh. 
Here he had an ovation, and the visit was memo- 
rably punctuated by the presence of Dr. Guthrie, 
Professor Miller, and a host of celebrities — his firm 
friends for ever after. 

This taste of Scotland taught the orator, spite of 
his dismal forebodings, that human nature is much 
the same in all lands, with due allowance for super- 
ficial differences produced by local causes; and that 
the English and Scotch, notwithstanding their sup- 
posed predilection for argument, take kindly and 
respond readily to men of the emotional and pictorial 
school. 

Encouraged by this discovery, Mr. Gough, took 
the train at Edinburgh for Liverpool, where he passed 
a few charming days with Mr. Harrison, the gentle- 
man who met him on the tug upon his arrival from 
America. Thence he went to London, to attend a 
temperance fete in Surrey Gardens, and addressed 
17,000 people — his largest audience up to that date. 

The last week in September, he had so far filled his 
engagements that he felt at liberty to claim and enjoy 
that long-anticipated visit to Sandgate — " dear Sand- 
gate, down in Kent." This grown-up boy entered it 
on top of one of those " Valyer" 'buses which had 
been the awe of his childhood, found in the driver one 
of his mother's former scholars, rode through the 
long street in a fever of excitement, as he read the 
familiar, Dickensesque names on the signs, just as he 



154 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

remembered them a quarter of a century earlier, — 
" Jimmy Bugg, the cobbler; Reynolds, the baker; 
Draynor, the fishmonger," — scarcely a noticeable 
change in the whole drowsy stretch. 

Best of all, he was remembered — and his mother, as 
a kind of local divinity. The old friends and play- 
mates of the past could not greet him warmly enough 
to satisfy their good hearts, though they hugged and 
kissed him — Mrs. Beatty, in particular, a dear old soul 
who had comforted " Johnny " with milk and ginger- 
bread on the eve of emigration. Five never to-be-for- 
gotten days u Johnny" Gough, as they persisted in 
calling him, spent among these humble folk and 
homely scenes. He ransacked the house where he 
was born from cellar to garret (an easy task)- — found 
the very nail on which he used to hang his coat and 
hat — hobnobbed with the keeper of Sandgate Castle 
now quite decrepit — roamed through the town and 
over the hills to explore anew the haunts of boyhood 
— walked to Folkestone, along the road by the " sad 
sea waves," to look at the building where he had re- 
ceived his only schooling (but it was gone !) — got out 
of the present and into the past, as an imaginative 
and poetic nature could do without an effort — and 
felt a mighty aching sense of grief at the thought of 
the pauper grave in which she lay with whose memory 
all these well-remembered scenes were so indissolubly 
associated. 

Soon he was joined by a party of notabilities from 
London and elsewhere, to whom he pointed out these 
same homely scenes and introduced these same 
humble folk. His father, who had followed him from 
America, was with him — which further helped to 



"how dear to my heart, etc. 155 

complete the illusion and enchant the years out of to- 
day and into yesterday. And his friend, Cruikshank, 
mightily interested, and quite at home in such sur- 
roundings, sketched Gough's birthplace, and repro- 
duced the landscape, as an artist might, in many 
portfolio studies. 

Mr. Gough's pride in his birthplace and fond re- 
membrance of his boyhood friends, lowly though they 
were, is not the least praiseworthy of his traits. Re- 
member, he was in England — the home of snobbery. 
He was famous — but near enough to the time " when 
days were dark and friends were few," to be sensitive 
on the subject. Here he stood, the admired center 
of a circle of flatterers. One whose manliness was of 
less fine fiber would have concealed those bygone 
experiences, spoken little of Sandgate, and gone 
thither, if he went at all, alone. This whole episode 
stirs affection for this man, and reveals his moral 
altitude. 

But how proud the Sandgaters were of " Johnny " 
Gough ! How they thronged over to attend his lec- 
ture at Folkestone ! How they laughed at his wit 
and cried at his pathos ! What a great man he was 
— as they always knew he would be ! 

This happening was an idyll in their lives and in 
his life. And Mrs. Beatty ! Mr. Gough gave her on 
the spot a crisp, new five-pound note — $25 — in part 
payment for the milk (of human kindness) and ginger- 
bread (of affection) which she had given him so long 
ago ; an amount which he never failed to send her 
while she lived, at Christmas, in annual installments 
on account of the " debt." 



III. 



HERE, THERE, AND YONDER IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 

Upon the termination of his six weeks' engagement 
with the League, Mr. Gough was induced to sign a 
new contract, he agreeing to deliver two hundred 
lectures, commencing in London on the 3d of October; 
and they stipulating to pay him at the rate of ten 
guineas — about $50 — a lecture and all expenses — the 
best terms he had made thus far. This programme 
disarranged his American plans ; but he wrote home 
canceling all outstanding dates, and prepared to give 
twelve months to temperance in the British Isles. 
" You must remember, Mr. Gough," his friends said 
to him, " that you owe something to your native 
country/' This argument, coupled wth the fact that 
he was accomplishing wonders, persuaded him, at the 
conclusion of this first vear, to add another on the 
same terms ; so that his contemplated summer out- 
ing in 1853, grew into an absence of two years. 

It is not easy work to give two hundred lectures in 
a year. It means the fatigue and exposure of con- 
stant travel, and the excitement and reaction of the 
platform four or five nights in every week until the 
advent of warm weather ends the professional season. 
In Mr. Gough's case there was the added strain of 
speaking always and everywhere on one subject — 



HERE, THERE, YONDER, IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 157 

in some instances scores and scores of times in one 
place and the same hall. The quality of his physical 
and mental constitution is shown by his endurance. 

Nor did this professional talker merely talk. While 
his nights were given to the platform, his days were 
given to hand-to-hand work among the intemperate, 
He was a great believer in contact — in the gospel of 
hand-shaking. In almost every place he visited there 
was some hard case — too hard for local treatment ; 
and so this expert was called in for consultation. 
Thus his faculties were kept in perpetual tension. 

Aside from the good he did to others in these daily 
excursions to seek and save, Mr. Gough aided him- 
self. For he was ever enlarging his experiences, and 
always adding to his stock of incidents, comic and 
tragic ; and was thus enabled to work into his ad- 
dresses fresh material which kept them up to date, 
and imparted to each a local flavor. 

In referring to his labors in the homes of the in- 
temperate, Mr. Gough says : 

" I know the term ' brute ' is often used in reference to 
drunkards, but they are not brutes — they are men — debased, 
brutalized, if you will ; but strip from them the influence of 
drink, and we find them men, in many cases with hearts as 
warm, feelings as tender, and sensibilities as keen as others 
possess. Dickens says of Mrs. Todgers, ' She was a hard 
woman, yet in her heart, away up a great many stairs, there 
was a door, and on that door was written, woman.' So in the 
heart of many a drunkard, away up a great many stairs, in a 
remote corner easily passed, there is a door. Tap on it gently, 
again and again — persevere ; remember Him who knocks at the 
door of your heart waiting for an answer till ' His locks are wet 
with the dew' — and be patient; tap on, lovingly, gently, and 
the quivering lips and the starting tear will tell you you have 



158 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

been knocking at a man's heart, not a brute's. This power of 
drink to drain and dry up the fountain of love and affection in 
the heart is one of the reasons why we should hate it."* 1 

In illustration of this truth, he tells this story : 

" A man came to meat Covent Garden and said : 

" ' Mr. Gough, I want you to come into my place of business.' 

"' I'm in a little hurry now,' I replied. 

M * You must come into my place of business.' 

" So when he got me there — into a large fruit-store, where 
he was doing business to the amount of two hundred and fifty 
or three hundred pounds ($1,250 or $1,500) a week, — he caught 
me by the hand and said: 

" ' God bless you, sir ! ' 

" * What for ? ' 

" ' I heard you in Exeter Hall a year and a half ago, and 
signed the pledge. I was a brute/ 

" ' No, you were not.' 

" ' Well, I was worse.' 

" * No, you were not.' 

" ' Well, I was as bad as I could be. Look at that cellar ! 
I spent a whole Sunday in that cellar on a heap of rotten vege- 
tables with a rope to hang myself by ! Now sir, I lease that 
cellar and clear a hundred pounds a year. God bless you sir ! 
See what a business I'm doing. Look here ! See that woman 
in the corner ? She's my wife. La ! how I have knocked her 
about. Would you go and shake hands with her ? ' 

" ' I've no objection.' 

" ■ Do, sir.' 

" ' I went up to her and offered my hand. She held back, 
and said, ' My fingers are so sticky with the fruit, sir.' 

" ' La ! ' said the husband, ' Mr. Gough don't mind sticky 
fingers.' 

" ' No, sir,' and I shook hands with her. Our fingers stuck 



1 "Autobiography," pp. 262, 263. 



HERE, THERE, YONDER, IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 159 

together ! They were stickier than I expected. Again the 
man said : 

" ■ God bless you sir ! I wish to give you something. Do 
you like oranges ? ' 

" ■ Sometimes.' 

" He went to a shelf that was full of them, and began to 
fill a great bag. 

"' That's enough,' I said. 

" But he paid no attention, and went on filling the bag. Then 
he put it in my arms, and said : 

" ' There ! Don't say a word ; but go along. God bless you ! ' 

" I had positively to hire a cab to take me home." ' 

As showing the redemptive power of temperance, 
and the significance of turning-points, he relates this 
incident: 

" I had just spoken in the City Hall of Glasgow to 2,500 
people. I was staying at the house of one of the merchant 
princes of that city, and when we came down stairs from the 
Hall his carriage was at the door — silver-mounted harness, 
coachman in livery, footman in plain clothes. You know it is 
seldom teetotalist lecturers ride in such style, and it is proper, 
therefore, that we should speak of it when it does happen, for 
the good of the cause. On reaching the pavement, the merchant 
said : 'It is so drizzly and cold you had better get into the 
carriage, and wait there until the ladies come down." I think 
I never had so many persons to shake hands with me as I did 
that night. ' You saved my father ! ' said one. ' You saved my 
brother ! ' said another, and a third said : ' I owe everything I 
am to you ! ' My hands absolutely ached as they grasped 
them one after another. 

" Finally, a poor wretched creature came to the door of the 
carriage. I saw his bare shoulder and naked feet ; his hair 
seemed grayer than mine. He came up, and said : 



1 Speech on " Drinking Usages of Society," pub. by Mass. Tern. 
Soc'y, 1861. 



l6o JOHN B. GOUGH. 

" ' Will you shake hands with me ? ' 

" I put my hand into his hot, burning palm, and he said, 
' Don't you know me ? ' 

" ' Why/ said I, ' isn't your name Aiken ? ' 

" ' Yes.' 

" * Harry Aiken ? ' 

" ' Yes.' 

" ' You worked with me in the bookbinder's shop of Andrew 
Hutchinson, in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1842, didn't you?' 

"'Yes.' 

" ■ What is the matter with you ? ' 

" ' I am desperately poor.' 

" I said, ' God pity you ; you look like it ! ' 

" I gave him something, and obtained the services of Mr. 
Marr, the secretary of the Scottish League, to find out about 
him. He picks up rags and bones in the streets of Glasgow, 
and resides in a kennel in one of the foulest streets of that city. 
When the ladies came to the carriage and got in, I said, * Stop, 
don't shut that door ! Look there at that half-starved, ragged, 
miserable wretch, shivering in the cold and in the dim gas- 
light ! Look at him ! ' The ring of that audience was in my 
ears, my hands aching with the grasp of friendship from scores, 
my surroundings bright, my prospects pleasant, and I said, 
' Ladies, look there ! There am I, but for the temperance 
movement! That man worked with me, roomed with me, 
slept with me, was a better workman than I, his prospects 
brighter than mine. A kind hand was laid on my shoulder, in 
the Worcester street, in 1842; it was the turning-point in my 
history. He went on. Seventeen years have passed, and we 
meet again, with a gulf as deep as hell between us !' I am a 
trophy of this movement, and I thank God for it." ' 

Mr. Gough spoke in all the more important towns 
in England and Scotland; he and Mary putting such 
intervals of leisure as they had into sight-seeing. 



Speech on ** Drinking Usages of Society. 



HERE, THERE, YONDER, IN THE BRITISH ISLES. l6l 

Temperance in Great Britain, in 1853-4, was where 
it had been in America w T hen Gough signed the 
pledge. Drinking was fashionable. Total abstinence 
was fanaticism. The Churches, as a rule, were on the 
wrong side. The clergy defended drinking out of 
the Bible. It was impossible to get churches to 
lecture in, or clergymen of repute to preside at tem- 
perance meetings. Oftener than otherwise, those 
who entertained Mr Gough had liquor on the table, 
or if not, bunglingly apologized to the other guests 
for its absence as due to his " prejudice." There 
were many splendid exponents of the cause, like John 
Bright and Joseph Sturge and the Earl of Shaftesbury. 
But, though many by actual count, they were rela- 
tively few. Temperance sentiment was confined to 
the middle classes — the upper and lower ignored it. 

The pledge, the great weapon of the temperance 
movement, was sharply and constantly attacked as 
" unmanly" — "a strait-jacket " — 4< fatal to self-respect " 
— and "destructive to character." 

It was easy to show that the temperance pledge 
rests upon precisely the same philosophical basis as 
any and every other sacred promise — that all the 
transactions of civil society rest ultimately upon a 
pledge. In marriage the bride and groom promise 
to love, cherish, and honor one another — a pledge. 
On uniting with the Church the member enters into a 
covenant — a pledge. When he goes on the stand a 
witness in court swears to tell the truth — a pledge 
The grantor in a deed pledges himself by record. 
The funds of universities and libraries and charitable 
organizations are held under a pledge — a solemn 
promise to administer them in certain designated 
11 



162 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

ways. Do pledges of these kinds undermine char- 
acter ? If not, then why does a pledge to abstain 
from the use of intoxicating liquor as a beverage ? 
Instead of undermining character, it rebuilds it and 
fortifies it, as hundreds of thousands can testify — re- 
constructs it as Nehemiah did the ruined walls of 
Jerusalem, in spite of the scoffs of Tobiah and 
Sanballat. 

Mr. Gough thought the temperance cause at that 
time better organized in Great Britain than in 
America, and believed it to be on a more permanent 
basis. With reference to the societies then existing, 
he remarks : 

"No one who attends their annual meetings, their festivals, 
their weekly assemblies, — can fail to be impressed by their 
earnestness, and I may say their pertinacity in carrying out the 
objects for which they are organized. Their boards of man- 
agers and standing committees are thorough, working men, who 
not only sympathize with temperance, but make it a special 
business to attend to the interests of the movement. I have 
been edified by the earnestness manifested at their business 
meetings, when I was privileged to attend them, and the care- 
fulness with which they deal with minute details, as well as 
the broader operations of their societies, — the patience with 
which they master difficulties, and their self-denying efforts to 
achieve the greatest good effectually. There is, to be sure, 
some formality in the proceedings — especially in their public 
meetings — strange to us in America, and to some annoying ; 
yet even this has its advantages ; they make the business a 
serious and earnest one, and the very formality, in a certain 
sense, gives the proceedings a greater stability than if their 
arrangements were all carried on at loose ends." ■ 



1 " Autobiography," pp. 331, 332. 



HERE, THERE, YONDER, IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 163 

The sojourner was charmed with the hospitality of 
the people. He got an inside view of their domestic 
life, warm, pure, sweet ; and discovered that they 
could not do enough for those whom they admitted 
to their fire-sides. The very children were kindly. 
He says : 

" One day, when strolling through Edinburgh, I saw a group 
of young girls standing in front of their school in the Canon- 
gate, looking toward me on the opposite side of the street. 
Soon they crossed and walked near me. One of them said very 
modestly : 

" ' Mr. Gough ha'e ye ony objection to us lassies walking wi* 
ye ? ' 

" 'Oh, no,' I responded, 'indeed I have not/ 

'"We've heerd ye speak in the Music Hall, an' we're a* tee- 
totalers.' 

" Presently they reached the hotel where Mr. Gough was 
quartered. Here one said : 

'"We'll ye ha'e ony objections to shakin' hands wi' us 
lassies ? ' 

" As I took their hands, I heard in that sweet, low Scotch 
tone: 

" ' Ye'll soon be gangin' awa' frae Edinburgh, and we'll weary 
for ye to come back again. Gude-bye to ye.' " ! 

Opportunities for special work sometimes presented 
themselves — as in addressing children, ladies, soldiers, 
and students — all eagerly embraced. In the gray and 
mossy old university town of Oxford, the speaker had 
a sharp bout with the students who thronged the hall, 
and who came for fun. For a time he was hard 
pushed ; but eventually he conquered them by his 
good humor and evident enjoyment of the racket — 



" Autobiography, " pp. 335, 336. 



164 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

they let him conclude in peace. A farewell/^ was 
held in honor of Mr. Gough, in the grounds of the his- 
toric " Hartwell House," near London, on the 25th of 
July, 1855. The enthusiam was great, the sorrow over 
his impending departure was loud, and the temper- 
ance leaders and masses were assembled in vast num- 
bers — Horace Greeley (then in Europe) being present 
as an invited guest. Good-bye speeches were made 
and suitably answered; and, loaded down with a 
massive dinner-service for eighteen of pure silver, 
presented at the fete, and with numerous other sou- 
venirs — Bibles, silver ink-stands, superb clocks, silver 
pitchers ; each one significant of some particular ex- 
perience ; the spoils, not of war but of love — John 
and Mary Gough embarked for home in August, 1855. 

It was the testimony of all that Mr. Gough's pres- 
ence and advocacy had set the temperance reform 
forward in Great Britain beyond precedent. As for 
himself, we quote and adopt the language of Lyman 
Abbott : 

" We doubt whether modern history records any 
case of an oratorical triumph more continuous and 
more extraordinary. Whitefield had the many-sided 
subject of religion, Mr. Gough but the one theme of 
temperance. Mr. Beecher's famous English speeches 
during the Civil War are unparalleled in the history 
of oratory ; but these were but six, and Mr. Gough 
spoke almost continuously for two years" 1 — between 
four and five hundred times in all ! And the eager- 
ness to hear him was greater at the close than at the 
start. He only got away at last by promising to re- 



1 Introduction to " Platform Echoes," 



HERE, THERE, YONDER, IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 165 

turn again in two years for another long campaign 
in the British Isles. 

Notwithstanding these unprecedented labors, and 
the exposure and excitement accompanying them, his 
health was good — better when he sailed for home 
than when he went out. 



PART VII. 

At Work in America Again 



"Look up, not down; look out, not in; 
and — lend a hand!" 

— Edward Everett Hale. 



"WESTWARD the course of empire take its way." 

Dear " Hillside ! " how good it seemed to this 
" absentee landlord " to be at home again. Even the 
"Yankee twang-" and the familiar "I guess," and 
" wal " w r ere like the tones of old friends. Six restful 
weeks were passed in the lap of idleness. Then the 
trumpet sounded for battle, and the fray began. 

Mr.Gough's British reputation, reechoed to America. 
His services were in greater demand than ever. Each 
mail brought him urgent invitations from all quarters. 
He had never visited the great Northwest. He deter- 
mined to do so now, the way having opened. At 
Philadelphia, on the 4th of October, 1855, he opened 
the season. That month was devoted for the most 
part to the State of New York. November was given 
to New England. On the 7th of December, he spoke 
in Chicago, for the first time. 

The census now shows a population of 1,600,000 in 
Chicago. The giant is 25 miles tall (along the lake, 
from north to south), with a depth of chest 10 miles 
deep (from the lake westward). Its head is cooled by 
the breezes of the north, charged with ozone. Its 
feet are planted broad and flat on the prairies, to the 
south. Its hands are busy with multifarious commer- 
cial manipulations. Its pockets are stuffed with mer- 
chandise, and its cheek is — words fail ! 



170 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

With prophetic vision, Mr. Gough foresaw the 
future in the past. Writing from Chicago at the date 
referred to, he said : " I found a population of more 
than 100,000; I have often wished that I could have 
labored there, and been identified, by my work, with 
the infancy of what is destined to be a giant among 
the cities of the world." 

In the same connection he writes : 

" This being- my first view of the Northwest, my impressions 
were those of wonder, almost amounting to awe, at the vast 
resources and the certain improvement and power of that sec- 
tion. I leave it for others, who are able to write of its destiny ; 
prophets all, and true, when they tell of its progress and swift- 
coming magnificence — for it grows before our eyes almost 
passing belief, and will grow year by year. Every Christian 
must look at the West with interest and deep anxiety for the 
enlightenment of the Western mind, and the establishment of 
the principles of a pure Christianity. West of the Mississippi 
what a domain is rapidly coming into settlement and cultivation! 
What millions must soon occupy the vast territory ! It is for 
Christians to decide whether these fertile lands shall be over- 
run with heathenism and infidelity, or be flooded with the light 
of Christian education. The field is immense — the opposing 
elements to good are powerful, the god of this world is mar- 
shaling his forces to ' go up and possess the land.' But if all 
who love righteousness will in Christ's name set up their ban- 
ners, and come to the ' help of the Lord against the mighty,' 
the issues of the conflict are sure ; for ■ greater is He that is for 
us than all they that be against us.' We may thus cooperate 
with God and holy angels in preventing sin, and in establishing 
His Kingdom in this great gathering- place of the nations. 
Men and women are laboring for this, full of faith. May our 
God speed their efforts ! " ] 



1 " Autobiography," pp. 382, 383. 



WESTWARD THE COURSE OF EMPIRE," ETC. 171 

Mr. Gough gave seven lectures in Chicago ; one 
each in Elgin, Milwaukee, Waukegan, Bloomington, 
Springfield, Alton; and then took the cars for St. Louis 
(also a first visit), where he lectured six times. 

Returning to the East, he resumed work in New 
York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New 
Hampshire, and Maine, besides speaking in all the 
large cities of the Atlantic seaboard. It was not 
until June 2d that he unbuckled the harness to enjoy 
a well-earned vacation at " Hillside. " 

When at home Mr. Gough usually attended church 
at Boylston. Worcester was conveniently near, but 
he felt that Boylston needed him. During the sum- 
mer of 1855, the church there was without a pastor. 
He acted, ad interim, as pulpit supply, Sunday-school 
superintendent, sexton, and parson. Calling to his 
aid influential clerical friends, he agreed to " board 
and lodge them " if they would preach on designated 
Sundays. These offers were accepted, and Dr. Kirk 
(his Boston pastor), Dr. T. L. Cuyler, Dr. Dutton, and 
Dr. George Gould were successively heard in the 
Boylston pulpit. Between himself and Dr. Gould an 
intimacy sprang up like that between David and 
Jonathan — they were inseparable. A revival marked 
these Boylston labors, and the feeble country church 
was recruited and refreshed. 

The idleness of an earnest man is fruitful. Rest 
comes from change. Mr. Gough, like Wesley, was 
" always at it." 



II. 



THE TIDE IS OUT. 



During the decade of 1855-65, in the United States, 
temperance touched the low-water mark. The tide 
was out — away out. Those Southern States which, a 
few years earlier, had adopted prohibition, seceded. 
In Maine itself the law, immortalized by its name, 
was repealed (in 1856), and superseded by license — 
as old as history, and as infirm as its age would indi- 
cate! The five other New England States retained 
the statute, but indifferently and spasmodically 
enforced it. In New York, rum-made and rum-paid 
judges declared the prohibitory law unconstitutional, 
and thus made dram-selling and drunkenness legal 
and equitable. This was the epoch of reaction. 

There were three causes. For one thing, " no 
special moral reform agitation, " as a philosophical 
observer remarks, " can be kept alive for an indefinite 
period. The public weary of it. They will not go 
to hear repeated for the fortieth time arguments 
whose conclusions they anticipate before they enter 
the hall, or experiences portrayed with which lectures 
and literature have already made them familiar." 

In the next place, this inevitable falling away of 
interest seriously affected the temperance propaganda. 



THE TIDE IS OUT. 173 

Public opinion was not made and inflamed as at the 
start. 

Thirdly, and most important of all, the country- 
was now preoccupied with another issue — newer — 
more angry — involving sectional feeling, interest, 
power — more clamorous — more hysterical, viz., the 
question of slavery, soon transferred from the forum 
to the battle-field, and debated with cannon-balls and 
grape-shot and bayonet charges for arguments; and 
with wounds, suffering, and death for practical ap- 
plications, rhetorical pauses, and punctuation marks. 
The constitution of the human mind is such that it is 
impossible to interest it equally and contempora- 
neously in two exciting and absorbing questions. The 
present was what Wendell Phillips called " the negro's 
hour." Temperance was temporarily crowded into 
the background. The Civil War, in preparation or 
in operation, concentrated the thoughts and energies 
of the continent upon itself. 

Mr. Gough was a close and accurate observer, as we 
have discovered. He was in constant motion, so that 
he knew the condition of affairs not only in localities 
but throughout the Union. And he was in close 
touch with prominent men everywhere — the men who 
make and reflect popular sentiment. Of course, such 
a man would speedily detect this lukewarmness, 
affecting as it did the cause to which his life was de- 
voted, and visible as it was across the whole field of 
action. His spirit was apprehensive. His heart was 
heavy. He regretted his impending departure, feel- 
ing that he was needed at home. But he had signed 
an agreement before leaving for America to return to 
Great Britain in two years and give three years to 



174 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

the cause over there on the same terms as in 1853-4-5. 
His engagements were with the London Temperance 
League, and the Scottish Temperance League. The 
headquarters of the first were in London; of the 
second in Glasgow. But before Mr. Gough's second 
visit, the two were consolidated in " The National and 
Scottish Temperance League" (in 1856). 

At this juncture, Neal Dow, the author of the Maine 
Law, one of the historic names of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, went to England to labor for prohibition in 
connection with the " United Kingdom Alliance," 
which was organized, in 1853, " to promote the total 
and immediate legislative suppression of the traffic in 
all intoxicating liquors as beverages." With this pro- 
gramme, Mr. Dow was in full accord. He was iden- 
tified with it in and through the Maine Law; which 
prohibited the manufacture and sale of intoxicating 
liquor, except by specially appointed or permitted 
agents, selling for excepted purposes only, with pro- 
vision for search, seizure, and forfeiture of liquors kept 
for illegal disposition. 

When Mr. Gough heard that Neal Dow was going 
abroad in 1856, he said: 

" I am sorry he is going this year, for I earnestly desire that 
his work there may be successful, and the English critics who 
are opposed to the law will say he has come to represent a 
failure, for the law is not now on the statute-books of his own 
State. If he would wait till it shall be reenacted with more 
stringent provisions, as it is sure to be, then, on the wave of a 
glorious success, his mission there would be doubly effective 
in aiding the friends to establish prohibition in Great Britain." 1 



1 " Autobiography," p. 393. 



THE TIDE IS OUT. 175 

On the 23d of March, 1856, Mr. Gough wrote to 
his friend G. C. Campbell in England: * 

" The cause in this country is in a depressed state ; the 
Maine Law is a dead letter everywhere — more liquor sold than 
I ever knew before, in Massachusetts, — and in other States it 
is about as bad. Were it not that I feel desirous of laboring 
with you again, I should be inclined to ask for the loan of 
another year to labor here. I never had so many earnest appli- 
cations for labor, and the field is truly ready, — not for the sickle, 
but for steady, persevering tillage; but we shall leave our dear 
home in July, with the expectation of laboring with you, as far 
as health and strength will permit, for the next three years. 
. . . I see Neal Dow is in England. I am glad. You will 
all like him ; he is a noble man — a faithful worker. He can 
tell better than any other man, the state of the Maine-Law move- 
ment here, and the cause of the universal failure of the law to 
produce the desired results." ! 

This was a personal letter, not intended for publi- 
cation. But as it recited certain facts which were of 
public concern, Mr. Campbell naturally and properly- 
published it. Knowing the heated state of feeling 
existing at the time between the moral-suasion and 
the Maine-Law wings of the temperance forces, here 
and abroad, Mr. Gough regretted the publication, 
and remarked to his wife, when she showed him a 
copy of the British Weekly Record containing it. " I 
can see how it may make trouble, but I hope it will 
not." 2 

This hope was not fulfilled. It did make trouble, 
with a vengeance. The temperance press of Great 
Britain at once took sides. The American reformer 
was attacked with surprising bitterness, with per- 



1 " Autobiography, " p. 392. - " Autobiography/' p. 394. 



1 76 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

sonal malignity, for this expression of opinion. He 
was defended with equal warmth. And that saddest 
of all controversies, one between co-laborers in a 
common cause, but divided into warring camps by 
differences regarding facts or methods — clawed and 
clamored, as though bedlam had broken loose. It 
was charged that Mr. Gough was " reckless " — that 
he was "prone to sweeping exaggerations" — that he 
was " not an honest prohibitionist nor an honest 
man " — that he was " subject to fits of the ' blues,' and 
had written this letter while under the influence of 
this malady" — that he "still drank, and took nar- 
cotics " — and so on to the end of a devil's chapter of 
rancor. 

As he moved about the country, the lecturer took 
care to collect facts which corroborated his state- 
ments. These he forwarded to his friends and de- 
fenders in Britain — thus adding fuel to the lire. 

The winter of 1856-57 he passed in the West. He 
spoke many times in many places — Chicago, Indiana- 
polis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, among the 
rest. In the spring of 1857, a farewell trip was taken. 
Great assemblies everywhere rallied to say " Good 
bye," notably at Philadelphia, in the Academy of 
Music, on the 21st of May, and at New Haven a 
month later. These were attended by the best and 
most representative men and women. On the 26. of 
July, a farewell picnic was held in a grove near " Hill- 
side," where and when neighbors said, bon voyage. 
On the 9th in St., Mr. and Mrs. Gough sailed from 
Boston, in the Niagara ^ accompanied by a party of 
intimates, including Dr. Gould — to be gone three 
years. 



PART VIII. 

The Second British Tour 



11 A good conscience is to the soul what health 
is to the body : it preserves a constant ease 
and serenity within us, and more than counter- 
vails all the calamities and afflictions which 
can possibly befall us. I know nothing so 
hard for a generous mind to get over as cal- 
umny and reproach, and cannot find any 
method of quieting the soul under them, 
besides this single one, of our being conscious 
to ourselves that we do not deserve them." 

— Addison, The Guardian, No. 135. 



12 



THE COURT OF EXCHEQUER. 

The Niagara dropped anchor in the Mersey on the 
26th of July, 1857. The " Yankees " were met and 
escorted ashore by a large party of waiting well- 
wishers, who saw their guests comfortably bestowed 
before they withdrew. 

Mr. Gough instantly found himself the movable 
center of a circumference of personal detraction. 
Whenever, wherever he moved, it moved. Across 
the blazing borders of it he could not leap. All that 
was weak in his intemperate past was deepened into 
wickedness; all that w T as wicked was exaggerated into 
unpardonable sin. His reformation was denied. It 
was charged that he was worse now than then; for 
now he was a sinner masquerading as a saint. 

All these reproaches came from the Pandora's box 
of that unfortunate letter to Mr. Campbell. The 
legal-suasian party in Great Britain chose to inter- 
pret the innocent missive as an affront to their policy. 
The orator was under contract to serve the interests 
of the moral suasionists — which added to the offense, 
since his popularity gave prestige to their rivals. The 
ill will and bad blood between the two temperance 
camps amazes the observer who looks back from the 
serene heights of distance and time. But it is clear 



l8o JOHN B. GOUGH. 

that a determined effort was made to blacken the 
character and thus destroy the influence of John B. 
Gough in the first year of his second British tour — 
all on account of his identification with one of the 
two then opposing schools of temperance thought and 
action. 

No, not all on this account: because personal 
jealousies and petty spites, born of unsuccessful com- 
petitioi played a part in the farce-tragedy. 

Or the day after landing in Liverpool, Mr. Gough 
addressed a large meeting in Queen Street Hall. 
He spoke nearly three hours, and in a vein of unusual 
seriousness and philosophy. Replying to the current 
criticism, he protested against the vituperation he 
had received because of the expression of his opinion; 
confirmed that opinion by documentary evidence ; 
paid a feeling tribute to " his noble friend and 
coadjutor," Neal Dow, and expressed a hope that the 
war between friends might stop — or be transferred 
into the country of the common foe. A resolution 
was passed, with substantial unanimity, at the close 
of these remarks, expressing satisfaction with Mr. 
Gough's statement and confidence in his character. 
With this resolution in his pocket, and the contro- 
versy quieted (as he hoped), he went up to London, 
and took possession of his old quarters, at No. 32 
Norfolk street, Strand, down by the Thames Embank- 
ment, in one of the busiest parts of the city. His 
engagements called for four months' work in Scot- 
land and eight in England for three years. But a 
week or more was given to breakfasts and fetes before 
the campaign opened. 

George Cruikshank entertained the American on 



THE COURT OF EXCHEQUER. l8l 

one of these occasions. George had a brother 
Robert, also an artist, so that the two were often con- 
fused. At about the time of this visit an English 
review had discussed the relative merits of the two 
brothers, reaching the conclusion (which posterity 
has also come to) that " George was the real Simon 
Pure." Soon after, a German wrote a sketch of 
George Cruikshank for a German encyclopaedia, in 
which he informed his readers that the subject of the 
memoir was an artist whose real name was Simon 
Pure, and in the index he w r rote : u Pure, Simon — the 
real name of George Cruikshank." Mr. Gough never 
tired of laughing with and at his friend over this 
mistake, nor of telling the story on both sides of the 
Atlantic. 

On the 25th of August, Exeter Hall again wel- 
comed the " Yankee " — as he had been dubbed by his 
enemies, with a view, no doubt, to enlist national 
prejudice against the too-popular English-American. 
Thence, via Manchester and Preston, where large 
meetings were held, the travelers journeyed to Edin- 
burgh. 

Here a flat was rented; because the Goughs desired 
at least the semblance of a home while sojourning in 
" the land o' cakes an' ale." From this convenient cen- 
ter, they circled out through Scotland, making their 
orbit take in the Orkney Islands — treeless, wind- 
swept, barren, cold, shrouded in mist of heaven and 
mist of sea. 

In January, 1858, they removed to London and 
began the English itinerary. They did in the South 
as they had done in the North — rented furnished 
apartments, and played at keeping house. Up and 



182 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

down, went the lecturer, informing and reforming 
multitudes, his comings and goings like a royal prog- 
ress. 

But during all these months the pitiless deluge of 
slander continued to beat down upon him; compared 
with this, the American abuse was as a passing sum- 
mer shower in contrast with the rainy season in the 
tropics. 

While in Scotland, an English associate, Mr. William 
Wilson, of Sherwood Hall, wrote Mr. Gough, stating 
that a prominent man had, in private correspondence, 
formulated specific charges against him. What were 
they? 

" Your friend St. Bartholomew has often been seen 
narcotically and helplessly intoxicated. I believe him 
to be as rank a hypocrite and as wretched a man as 
breathes in the Queen's domains/' Such were the 
alleged offenses, which the writer asserted he could 
prove by scores of witnesses. He challenged the 
" Yankee " to sue him for libel, and thus bring the 
question before an English jury. 

Mr. Gough demanded, and finally got, the name of 
this libeler. It was F. R. Lees, Ph.D., a repre- 
sentative and lecturer of the United Kingdom 
Alliance. 

Dr. Lees did not stop here. He dredged the sewers 
of slander in the United States, and imported the offal 
thus collected; he wrote to those who entertained Mr. 
Gough and asked these hosts to put their guest under 
espionage; and he hired and sent out lecturers to 
"expose " the " Yankee." 

What was Dr. Lee's motive ? Nominally, it was the 
vindication of a friend named Peter Sinclair, who had 



THE COURT OF EXCHEQUER. 183 

been sharply criticised in America, when he was there 
lecturing, and in Scotland, where he had been at work 
for temperance. Dr. Lees, without any proof, and 
against the truth, assumed that Mr. Gough had in- 
spired their criticisms, and hence threatened him with 
exposure unless he should apologize for and with- 
draw statements he never made. The real motive 
was, no doubt, a mixed one — the spite of a clever lec- 
turer overshadowed by a greater one, and intense par- 
tisanship. 

The " Yankee M accepted the challenge of Dr. Lees. 
Suit was brought in the Court of Exchequer, before 
Baron Martin. The case was tried in June, 1858, Mr. 
Gough took the stand. He testified that, since the 
episode of the drugged soda-water in 1845, ne na cl 
never tasted spirituous liquors of any kind; had never 
bought or eaten opium in any form, saving on that 
occasion, before he signed the pledge, when he con- 
templated suicide by swallowing laudanum; that he 
knew nothing about the articles reflecting upon Peter 
Sinclair; and that he had with him several memo- 
randum-books which w T ould show his whereabouts 
and condition during every day of the interval in 
question. 

Here the plaintiff's attorney rested. It was now the 
turn of the counsel for the defendant to cross-examine 
the witness. He rose. He retracted the charges. 
He consented to a verdict for the plaintiff — with nom- 
inal damages, because Mr. Gough wanted not money, 
but a legal vindication. 

Dr. Lees, a day or two later, repudiated the conduct 
of his counsel in this disposition of the case, which 
drew forth from his leading lawyer a letter, in which 



184 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

he confessed that there was nothing else to do — that 
his client was present in court and consented to the 
action taken, and had no evidence at all to substan- 
tiate his charges. 

What shall be thought of a libeler who does not 
provide himself with evidence before he begins to 
utter the libel ? 

It has been shrewdly surmised that what really 
frightened off the defense in the famous case of 
Gough vs. Lees, was the fact that the plaintiff had 
with him in court those memorandum-books, which 
traced his life from day to day and place to place, 
with dates and witnesses of his state set down in black 
and white. Lyman Abbott, in referring to the matter, 
says: " From that day to Mr. Gough's death, slander 
against his good name never rose above a whisper. 
Neither envy, malice, nor even partisanship dared 
face that diary/' 1 

Mr. Gough felt this abuse keenly. " It was a terri- 
ble ordeal," he writes; " they intended that I should 
suffer, and I did; and, if it is any consolation for them 
to know that they caused me and mine such pain as I 
would not inflict on the meanest of God's creatures, 
I give them the information here. Still, through all 
this, I did not miss an appointment, but kept steadily 
at work." 2 

Had he been less sensitive and more worldly-wise, 
the orator, living upon publicity, would have gotten 
comfort from the reflection that his enemies were giv- 
ing him free advertisement. For months his name 



1 Introduction to " Platform Echoes," p. 63. 
" Autobiography," p. 403, 



THE COURT OF EXCHEQUER. 185 

was in every journal and on all lips on both sides of the 
water. The daily press behaved admirably. Scurril- 
ous matter, offered in abundance was rejected. The 
actual facts were speedily detected and published. 
Editors took up the cudgels for Mr. Gough; and Dr. 
Lees, et. a/., were belabored as lustily as though all 
the parties were engaged in a shindy at " Donnybrook 
Fair." Excepting when animated by political passion 
or interest, the newspapers of England and America, 
alike, may be relied upon in every case to secure fair- 
play and announce righteous judgment. 



II. 

CONTINENTAL GLIMPSES. 

Leaving the Court of Exchequer with, a sigh of 
relief, Mr. Gough resumed work, and divided the 
autumn and winter of 1858-59, and the ensuing 
spring and early summer, according to agreement, 
between England and Scotland. So far from injur- 
ing him, the assaults upon his character, now banned 
by an acquittal in open court, served but to increase 
his audiences and animate his friends. He became 
the hero of the hour; a position which his modesty 
enabled him to hold without growing dizzy with con- 
ceit. Small men look smaller on a pedestal ; great 
men need one. 

The long strain, however, told upon him. He re- 
solved to take a vacation, and to spend it on the Con- 
tinent. With his wife and a small party of relatives 
and friends, he left London on the 22d of July, 1859, 
for Paris, where he arrived after a pleasant run of 
eleven hours. 

Mr. Gough did not like Paris. He appreciated 
and acknowledged its beauty, but the atmosphere of 
the place did not suit him. The genius loci was not 
congenial. The reason is obvious — he was an earnest 
man — a man with a mission. Paris is the capital of 
pleasure. It is laid out in the interest of " the lust 
of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of 
life." 'Tis the city of sensual enchantments. Its 



CONTINENTAL GLIMPSES. 187 

boulevards, its broad spaces, populous with bewitch- 
ing statues, its architectural splendors, its kaleido- 
scopic movement and glitter, appeal to the aesthetic 
rather than the moral nature. Lotus-eating is there 
the serious business of life. The city is love-sick with 
music and poetry. The luxurious citizens, melted in 
baths and perfumes, and lounging in delicious lan- 
guor, in front of the cafes, or in the foyers of the 
operas or theaters, mock at the severe precepts of 
Christian virtue. Lyres and easels are preferred to 
Bibles and churches. Paris is the apotheosis of earth. 
Beautiful? Yes; but " earthly, sensual, devilish/' 

A week in Paris, passed in sight-seeing, was enough 
for Mr. Gough, and that ex-Yankee schooima'am, his 
wife, two Puritan souls out of harmony with their 
environment. On the 29th they deserted the French 
capital for Geneva, where they rested on the Sunday 
and attended church, their habit always and every- 
where. On the Monday following they set out for 
Chamounix. The day was clear. The experiences 
were new. Each one made an indelible impression. 
Mr. Gough thus describes his first glimpse at Mont 
Blanc: 

" Soon afternoon we arrived at Lallenche, and, while waiting 
for dinner and a change of voiture, I strolled out with Dr. 
Gould ; my wife, being weary, remained in the hotel. Stand- 
ing together on the bridge, I said, ' How new all this is to me 
— the mountains, valleys, waterfalls, picturesque villages, cha- 
lets — all new and strange; the sky so clear and blue, the clouds 
so pure — it is all glorious ! What a peculiar cloud that is be- 
hind those hills ! so white, so clearly cut, it appears like — why 
it is — yes — no — George, that is the mountain — that is Mont 
Blanc ! I know it !' And as I caught the first view of the 



l88 JOHN B. GOTJGH. 

monarch of the Alps I trembled with excitement. With tears 
in my eyes, and my heart full, I turned away to hurry Mary out 
to enjoy it with us. We traveled the well known route to the 
Valley of Chamounix. As we passed through it toward the 
village, the sun sank behind the hills, and left us in shadow; 
but the gorgeous coloring of the snow clad mountains filled us 
with delight. Ever-changing, ever-beautiful — wave after wave 
of glory seemed to roll over the summit, growing more and 
more subdued until, with one flash of exquisite beauty from the 
sun's last beam, the wonderful outline of mountain tops stood 
relieved by the dark blue sky — white, cold, chastely beautiful." l 

A few happy days of excursionizing in and around 
Chamounix succeeded this elect day of entrance, the 
weather holding fair and favorable. Then the tour- 
ists proceeded through the magnificent Tete Noir and 
Brunig Passes to Lucerne — another dream of de- 
light. Thence the route lay through Basle, out of 
Switzerland into Germany, to Mayence, down the 
Rhine to Cologne, and from Cologne, by way of Lisle 
and Calais, across the channel, to England and Lon- 
don. 

Amid the pleasures of travel, Mr. Gough did not 
forget his life-work. He says: 

" I had heard so much of the sobriety of wine-growing coun- 
tries, and so many propositions to introduce wine in America 
as a cure for drunkenness, that I determined to make what per- 
sonal observations I might be able during my brief sojourn on 
the Continent. On the boulevards and the Champs Elysees I 
saw no more drunkenness than in Broadway or Fifth Avenue ; 
but in the narrow by-streets back of the main thoroughfare, I 
discovered as many evidences of gross dissipation as in Baxter 
street, New York, or in Bedford street, Philadelphia. I took 
a survey of the low cabarets, and found the same bloated or 



1 " Autobiography," p. 447. 



CONTINENTAL GLIMPSES. 189 

haggard faces, the same steaming rags, the same bleared and 
blood-shot eyes, the same evidence of drink-soaked humanity 
in its degradation, as in any of the grog-shops in the United 
States. In Geneva — the same ; we were kept awake by the 
bacchanalian revels of intoxicated men in the streets all night. 
In Vevay, I saw more evidences of drunkenness than in any 
town of its population in America. In Mayence, a fair was held 
while we were there, and I saw more drunken men on the 
streets and in the squares than I believe were to be seen on the 
streets during the whole five days of the ' Peace Jubilee ' in 
Boston. In Basle and in Cologne, it was the same ; and my 
impressions are, from personal observation (not very extensive), 
that drunkenness prevails in wine-growing countries to as great 
an extent as in any portion of the United States that I have 
visited." 1 

Mr. Gough relates how he and his wife were shown, 
at Cologne, the skulls of the ten thousand virgins — 
or at least some skulls, and says: " The attendant 
showed us a small cracked jar, carefully inclosed in a 
case, lined with crimson velvet, and told us that was 
one of the jars the Saviour filled with wine at the 
marriage in Cana. My wife turned away, and he said 
with a shrug: 

" Americaine — hah! not moosh like relique." 

He adds: 

" This reminded me of the sword that w T as exhibited as 
Balaam's sword with which he slew the ass. One of the spec- 
tators said : 

" * But Balaam did not have a sword ; he only wished for 
one.' 

" ' Ah ! ' cried the showman, ' this is the sword he wished 
for.'" 2 



1 " Autobiography/' pp. 445, 446. 2 •' Autobiography," p. 450. 



III. 



A DIP INTO IRELAND. 



Nothing is more fatiguing than sightseeing. It 
involves a double strain, of the body, on account of 
the incessant movement, and of the mind, through liv- 
ing on the qui vive, and thinking and talking in ex- 
clamation marks. Those breathless twenty-three days 
on the Continent made Mr. Gough, veteran traveler 
though he was, glad enough to rest a fortnight in 
London, before again turning 

"... itinerant, 
To stroll and teach from town to town." 

But, as Tennyson says, " men must work." On the 
30th of August the new season began, and the 
whole of September was spent in England. Then, on 
the 3d of October, the lecturer crossed to Erin, and 
stepped for the first time on Irish soil. At Dublin he 
was entertained by the Rev. Dr. John Hall, later of 
New York. Here three lectures w r ere delivered to 
crowded and enthusiastic audiences. The responsive- 
ness of the Celtic blood is proverbial. The Irish have 
quicksilver in their veins. Mr. Gough also spoke in 
Belfast, Londonderry, and Cork, — in the former four 
times, in the latter two cities, twice in each. These 



A DIP INTO IRELAND. I9I 

engagements took him quite through the island. The 
impressions of such a shrewd sight-seer are of value. 

The Irish question was then, as it is now, has been 
for five hundred years, and will be until it is settled 
on the basis of political equity, — what the French 
call a burning question. Mr. Gough saw, what every 
traveler sees, abounding ignorance, poverty, and 
drunkenness — the very landscape squalid and tipsy. 
He found the people in a state of chronic insurrec- 
tion and hating the name of England. They were at 
once the most religious and the most unconscientious 
peasantry in Europe. They went to mass, and then 
adjourned to engage in or watch a prize-fight. They 
talked honestly, and reduced thievery to a fine art in 
practice. They were grateful and ungrateful, in a 
breath. They worked, and were yet improvident. 
In wit no one could equal them, and in practical 
faculty they rated with the people of Dahomey. 

Himself one of the most mercurial of men, Mr. 
Gough believed that these contradictions in the Irish 
nature were the result of a volatile temperament. He 
understood the Irish, because he knew himself. The 
lightning changes of mood, the heights and depths of 
feeling, the unreasoning and sometimes unreasonable 
states of mind which marked and marred his own 
disposition, he discovered in these dear, dirty, alto- 
gether enigmatical but delightful Irish folk — the ad- 
miration and despair of both friends and foes. 

As for the existing ignorance and poverty, the 
apostle of cold water had no difficulty in tracing these 
to their sources. He was convinced that a vicious 
political system was one cause: a system so vicious 
that it gave over the land of Ireland to absentee 



192 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

owners, who had no interest in the tenants, save to 
squeeze out of them rent to the last farthing; made 

peasant proprietorship impossible, thus depriving the 
tillers of the soil of all inducement to improve the 
land, and of the sense of self-respect which comes 
from ownership; and discouraged manufactures, the 
only other available means of prosperity, because 
manufacturing England would not tolerate a rival on 
the other side of the Irish Sea. 

The other plain cause of Irish pauperism he dis- 
covered in the drunken habits of the people. During 
the progress of Father Mathew's memorable temper- 
ance crusade, which began in 1838, 5,000,000 people, 
of both sexe-, all ages, and all conditions, out of a 
total population of 8,175,124, took the pledge of total 
abstinence. Four years later, drunkenness had dis- 
appeared in many parts of the Emerald Isle, the pub- 
lic-houses were deserted, the distilleries and breweries 
were closed, and the criminal calendars at the assizes 
were almost blank. The annual consumption of 
spirits dropped from 11,595.536 gallons in 1837 to 
6,484,443 in 1841, with an increased population. 

This happy condition did not become permanent — 
why ? Because it was not secured by a prohibitory 
law. A weak, moral purpose could not resist the 
allurements of temptation. Little by little, the liquor 
interest regained its temporarily lost supremacy. 
The public-houses, distilleries, and breweries resumed 
business under license. The number of gallons of 
ardent spirits consumed in a twelvemonth went up 
higher than ever; while the population entered upon 
a rapid decline — which has continued to this day. As 
for the courts, they soon found plenty of occupation, 



A DIP INTO IRELAND. 193 

one person in every fifty-four of the population being 
annually convicted of habitual drunkenness. 

Of these, and similar facts, we may be sure the 
temperance lecturer made telling use on the Irish 
rostrum. 

Evidences of the awful famine of 1848, which 
America honored itself by shipping provisions to 
relieve, and in aid of which Mr. Gough had spoken 
more than once — were visible. Yet at that very time 
many million quarters of grain were diverted from 
the tables of the starving peasants to the distilleries, 
and thus destroyed for food and distilled into poison 
for the brain. " When children were found dead," 
remarks Mr. Gough, " with the seaweed they had 
been sucking for nourishment between their teeth; 
when, as I was told in Brandon by the rector, people 
dreaded to go out at night for fear of stumbling over 
a dead body; when thousands of poor creatures were 
fed every day in the yards of the well-to-do, and 
when such Good Samaritans were obliged to sprinkle 
the stones on which they sat with chloride of lime, 
for fear of infection from the famine fever which was 
raging; — at that very time the smoke of the distil- 
leries was darkening the air and intensifying the 
famine." ' 

Mr. Gough spent a good many hours while in Ire- 
land in looking around. The streets of Dublin and 
of Cork specially attracted him. He says: 

" The best thing I heard in Dublin was said by a man to a 
woman. Two men were talking together, evidently belonging to 
the poorest class, when a woman short, thick, and dumpy, and 



M Sunshine and Shadow," pp. 152, 153. 
13 



194 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

shockingly dirty, came up and interrupted them. ■ To the 
divel I'll pitch ye now, if ye're not away,' said one. 

" Still she annoyed him, when, with an indescribable con- 
tempt in tone and gesture, he said : 

' Go away with ye now ; you're for all the world like a bad 
winter's day — short and dirty ! '" ■ 

In referring to Cork, he says: 

" I followed two ballad-singers for nearly an hour to note 
the people. The ballad was rough, the singers were rude, 
and not very musical. The theme was the loss at sea of the 
Royal Charter. I was very much touched by the sad, sym- 
pathetic faces of the listeners, a crowd of whom surrounded the 
singers. The description of the storm, the striking of the ship, 
the cry of the passengers, the prayer that was offered by those 
on deck, — all received a share of notice and sympathy. When 
the -name of God was spoken, every man's hat was off, and 
every woman bowed her head. I saw tears streaming down 
the cheeks of some, and heard such expressions as, ' Ah ! God 
be betune us an' all harrum ' ; and, • Oh! the cruel, cruel say, 
to swallow them all up.' It was to me very interesting." 2 

Ireland is the most beautiful of islands. It should 
be the happiest. Its rock-bound coast is a fringe of 
grandeur on an emerald robe. Its soil is as fertile as 
the sod is green. Its lakes are mirrors of heaven. Its 
hills and vales are flowery with romance and hoary 
with legend. The whole landscape is a smile of God. 

Alas ! though the mother of the people is genius, 
their father is squalor. They are housed in the hovel 
of drunkenness. A poor-house, couchant, and a dis- 
tillery, rampant, should be quartered upon the Irish 
coat-of-arms. 



44 Autobiography/' p. 487. ' 2 " Autobiography," p. 485. 



IV. 



BRITISH MORALS, MANNERS, AND MEN. 

The more salient of Mr. Gough's Continental and 
Irish impressions have been noted. We jot down in 
this chapter some of his views of British morals, man- 
mers, and men. 

He observed and commended the judicious slow- 
ness of the English mind, — its dislike of novelty, — its 
constitutional conservatism, — its stubborn determina- 
tion to hold on to what it has until it is sure of some- 
thing better, — its preference for an acre on earth 
rather than a principality in Utopia, — its deliberate 
investigation and debate of every measure of pro- 
posed reform, from Magna Charta down, and desire 
to be assured of its practicability, before moving to 
adopt it. But he noted that when once convinced, 
movement follows, and what is gained is gained for 
ever. Lord Chesterfield, several generations ago, 
expressed this truth by implication, in an epigram 
addressed to a French acquaintance: " You French- 
men erect barricades, but never any barriers." When 
the French see or suspect an abuse they are furious, 
sing the " Marseillaise," and upset the Government. 
The next week a reaction sets in, and the abuse reap- 
pears. In Britain the abuse is named, a meeting is 
called, proofs are offered, public opinion is informed, 



196 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

and reform follows as a matter of course, and stays. 
This takes time, and is galling to certain nervous and 
sanguine spirits. But arguments are better than 
bombs. And progress is surer when made by pop- 
ular consent, than w T hen imposed either by a mob or 
by a Cabinet. Many times hasty people go away 
from Britain only to come back after a series of mis- 
adventures to slow up with the country. 

It was his knowledge of this mood of the British 
mind which made John B. Gough so patient and per- 
severing in his use of moral suasion. He saw that what 
the people needed was information and direction — 
the actual preception of ardent spirits as an abuse 
that required reforming and could be reformed. 
" The great difficulty experienced in advocating tem- 
perance there," he writes, " is, or was, the dogged, 
arbitrary condemnation of the principles involved, a 
stolidity of perception, and an expressed belief in the 
impossibility of establishing those principles among 
them. And yet the temperance movement is steadily 
increasing in power and influence. Some of the 
leaders are far-seeing men, and look not only to the 
direct results, but to the future development of the 
harvest of which they are patiently sowing the seeds. 
I know no men who are more deserving of all praise 
than the steady, persevering advocates of reform — 
political, ecclesiastical, and moral — in Great Britain." ' 

Mr. Gough bears glowing testimony to the " large 
amount of good effected in England by self-denying 
women," and adds: 

'• Let any person read ■ English Hearts and English Hands,' 



1 " Autobiography," pp. 506, 507. 



BRITISH MORALS, MANNERS, AND MEN. 197 

or ' The Missing Link,' and he will see what women are doing 
in Christian work among the destitute classes. Read ' Haste 
to the Rescue,' or 'Ragged Homes, and How to Mend Them,' 
or ' Workmen and Their Difficulties,' and you will gain an in- 
sight into this sphere of labor that will convince you that their 
work must be successful in the end. No discouragements 
hinder, no opposition checks them ; their purposes seem 
strengthened by blasts of adverse criticism. I met the men and 
women who have been gathered in the ' Kensington Potteries ' 
by Mrs. Bailey, and I spent a few days at Shrewsbury, as the 
guest of Rev. Charles Wightman, whose noble wife has accom- 
plished a wonderful work among the denizens of Butcher's row 
— uncleanness, degradation, sin alleviated. ... In many 
places where I was a guest, I found the ladies of the family 
busily and earnestly engaged in endeavoring to ameliorate the 
condition of the poor, by inculcating temperance, visiting 
them, reading to them, and teaching them cleanliness and habits 
of thrift." " 

This work is not confined to the temperance classes. 
Thoughtful people generally are addressing them- 
selves more and more to the study and solution of 
the complicated problems which tax and vex modern 
civilization — so he testifies. 

Mr. Gough's remarks regarding society are inter- 
esting : 

" Society in Great Britain is divided into three classes — 
nobility, gentry (among whom rank the clergy), and the public 
generally. These again are divided and subdivided, to an 
almost illimitable extent. My work brought me constantly in 
contact with the public generally, often with the gentry, and 
very seldom with the aristocracy. Though the reverence for 
mere rank is dying out, still there is a deference paid to ' my 



1 "Autobiography," pp. 510 and 512. 



I98 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

lord ' ; and to be seen on the sunny side of Pall Mall in the 
height of the season, arm in arm with a live lord, would repay 
some men for any amount of toadyism." ■ 

Although toadyism results inevitably from the 
social organization in Great Britain, our critic is sure 
that there is a large element of it in human nature, 
and gives this sly dig at America : 

" Though we in a republican country ridicule the flunkeyism 
of Great Britain, there is just as much here as there. Many 
Americans would feel flattered by attention from a lord, and 
bow as low to a title as any in England. How much planning 
and maneuvering there is to secure the presence of a lord at 
fashionable parties in New York and in other cities we all 
know." ' 2 

He might have made his case stronger had he cited 
the common sale of American heiresses for titles in 
the matrimonial markets of Europe — so much gold 
for so much title, with the girl thrown into the bar- 
gain ! 

Continuing in this vein, he goes on to say : 

" I have heard of the great affability of the nobility, but I 
must confess, that in my limited experience of them I have 
found, with some exceptions, an indescribable sort of 'touch 
me not,' a kind of ' you may look but you must not touch.' 
Perhaps it is owing to my education and early experiences, but 
I could never feel as entirely at my ease with a lord as with a 
commoner." 3 

Mr. Gough was persuaded that the existence of a 
large, wealthy, idle, upper class, whose object in life 



1 "Autobiography,'' p. 456. 2 "Autobiography, pp. 456, 457. 
3 "Autobiography," p. 457. 



BRITISH M0RA1S, MANNERS, AND MEN. I99 

is pleasure, stands toward vice in the relation of cause 
to effect. On this point he says : 

" While I was in London, a testimonial was presented to a 
man who has dared, perhaps more than any other, to make 
vice attractive. I speak of the manager and proprietor of the 
1 Argyll Rooms,' where music and dancing are carried on 
every night — ' admission, gentlemen one shilling, ladies free,' 
and where no reputable woman enters. Actually, a lord pre- 
sided at the dinner and presented the testimonial ! No wonder 
London abounds in Traviatas in the parks, theaters, and 
fashionable streets. The terrible ' social evil,' like everything 
else in London, is on the most gigantic scale; it is a question 
that can never be tabulated. And so long as women can barely 
exist in virtuous industry — so long as there are rich and fash- 
ionable men to sanction vice — so long as young blood becomes 
fevered by strong drink — so long as young men and women 
dare not marry, as their parents did, and bravely and nobly 
fight the battle of life ; — so long will the ' social evil ' in Eng- 
land, and in this country, continue to be a social blot, tainting 
society — a frightful source of sin and misery." l 

Mr. Gough says that the social divisions in Britain 
were accurately marked by the prices of admission to 
his lectures : First class, five shillings, or half a crown, 
as it might be ; second class, one shilling; working 
people, sixpence. 

In the manufacturing districts he found much to 
deplore: 

"No one can visit them without being struck by the contrast 
betw r een the operatives there and here. Go into a mill here and 
you see the girls, as a rule, neat, clean, healthy — bits of looking- 
glass placed on the walls, or posts, at intervals, and perhaps 
some young girl ' doing up her hair ' in her short leisure time, 



"Autobiography," pp. 463, 464. 



200 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

or sitting for another to curl it. In many English factories you 
see heated, half-clad figures, thin, clammy hands, and pallid 
faces — girls, women, lads, men — all alike in their gaunt, ghastly 
weariness. Out of the mill you see abject slovenliness, only 
occasionally relieved by a faint attempt at smartness. Girls 
go without bonnets, with sometimes a shawl over the head 
from which they have not picked out the oily refuse that clings 
to them. In Scotland and Ireland they are universally bare- 
footed. In Lancashire they wear those wooden-soled shoes 
that make a peculiar and deafening clatter, clatter, when the 
mill hands are let out." 1 

Of all working people, however, "the Yankee" 
found the miners and the agricultural laborers the 
most ignorant and neglected — but a step above the 
yahoos or thugs. The miners being out of sight 
(underground) are out of mind. With regard to the 
farm hands, he remarks: 

" We are told that ' nature is a great educator.' I do not be- 
lieve it. I found men and women who were born and reared, 
and who lived in the most, lovely rural districts, where nature 
laughs in all the perfection of beauty, who are among the most 
stupid, boorish, and unintellectual beings in human shape. 
Their employment requires no thought; one is a plowman, and 
does nothing but follow the plow ; another a hedger or ditcher, 
etc. I have tried to converse with them, but found them wo- 
fully ignorant. The last words of a dying Lancashire boor are 
recorded: ' W'at wi' faath, and watwi' the 'arth turning round 
the soon, and w'at wi' the raalroads a fuzzen and a whuzzen, 
I'm clean moodled and bet.' " 2 

Mr. Gough is sure that Dickens and Thackeray and 
Kingsley have not drawn and could not draw an 



" Autobiography," pp. 470, 471. a " Autobiography," p. 472. 



BRITISH MORALS, MANNERS, AND MEN. 201 

exaggerated picture of the ignorance of these people. 
He writes : 

" When visiting Bedfordshire, where Bunyan lived, preached, 
and was imprisoned, and Cowper's residence when he was so 
long with Mrs. Unwin — I went with a party to see the Church 
in which Scott, the commentator, once preached. A woman 
accompanied us to show us the place, and at every reply to 
our questions, with her arms folded, she would duck down in 
an attempt at a courtesy.. I said to her once : 

" ' Please, ma'am, do not bob at me so, when I speak to you. 
I do not like it.' 

"We noticed a row of hard-looking benches — reminding me 
of the seats in old-fashioned New England schoolhouses. I 
asked : 

4 " What are these benches for ? ' 

"' Please, sir, they gits the colic, sir.' 

" ' The colic ! good gracious ! what do they get the colic 
for?' 

" ' Please, sir, they are obleeged to, every Sunday morning, 
sir.' 

-l 'Well, well, I never heard of such a thing ; obliged to get 
the colic every Sunday morning ? ' 

"' Yes, please sir, all of them is obliged to get it.' 

" I must confess for a moment I had a vision of a set of 
wretched children on hard benches in a high state of inward 
disturbance — when one of the party laughed heartily and said : 

" ' She means they are compelled to learn the collect (prayers 
for the day in the English Church liturgy) every Sunday 
morning.' 

" That was, probably the extent of their religious education." ' 

In Scotland the helpers about the farm were called 
hinds — a word which defines their status. In Wales, 
Mr. Gough saw women and young girls working in 



1 Autobiography," pp. 478, 479. 



202 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

the brick-yards — their dress simply a coarse frock. 
All these unfortunates were boozy with beer or fud- 
dled with gin. 

This was a generation ago. Things have somewhat 
mended since then. But we have already quoted Mr. 
Gough's testimony regarding the slowness of the 
British mind. What need amid such surroundings 
for the heart of Christ and the zeal of Paul! 

Mr. Gough's vocation brought him in contact with 
the celebrities of the day, and especially with such as 
wrought in the field of philanthropy. Many of these 
meetings by the wayside of reform ripened into 
charming intimacies. The Established Church was 
then unfriendly to teetotalism, so that its clergy were 
not in touch w T ith him. But the great Nonconform- 
ists leaders cooperated zealously against the drink. 
Of several titans he makes offhand sketches, com- 
mencing with Dr. Guthrie: 

" One of the most fascinating preachers I ever heard was 
Dr. Guthrie, of Edinburgh. In 1853-5$ and 1857-60 I listened 
to him often. It was difficult to get into the church, every inch 
of room being occupied that could be made available either for 
sitting or standing. The doctor kindly gave me a pass, and 
my wife and myself always found a good seat. The audience 
was composed of the literary, philosophical, scientific, and 
intellectual, with a fair show of the commonplace; for the 
preacher had a marvelous power of adapting his discourse to 
the gratification of the intellectual and to the understanding of 
the common mind. The Duke of Argyll was often there, 
together with professors from the University. Truly, the rich 
and poor met together, for Dr. Guthrie was almost worshiped 
by many of the denizens of the closes on High street, and no 
wonder ; for while he rebuked the sins, he sympathized with 
the sorrows of poor humanity. . . . After the preliminary 



BRITISH MORALS, MANNERS, AND MEN. 203 

services, which were very solemn and tender, the people settled 
down to listen. The first time I heard him he took the text : ' We 
all do fade as a leaf.' Then there was a pause amid the breath- 
less silence of the congregation. See him with his noble fore- 
head, and those magnificent eyes, as he tenderly looks over the 
large assemblage, his heait overflowing with tender sympathy 
and affection for those who were traveling to that * bourn from 
which no traveler returns.' And then he went on and on with 
that magnificent voice, sometimes like 'a thunder psalm among 
the hills,' then like the sigh of the wind among the trees ; again 
like the sound of a trumpet, then like the ^Eolian harp ; at one 
moment, sharp, staccato, the next seeming to struggle through 
•a mist of unshed tears.' Your eyes would fill in spite of your- 
self by the power of his pathos. 

" The acquaintance and friendship I was permitted to enjoy 
with Dr. Guthrie, is one of the most delightful of my reminis- 
cences. He presided several times at my meetings ; and I 
remember how amused he was when once the Secretary said: 

"' The Rev. Dr. Guthrie, author of the " Sins and Sorrows of 
the City," will preside ; and Professor Miller, author of " Alco- 
hol " will preside to-morrow evening.' M * 

The Rev. William Arnot, of Glasgow, was another 
Scotch pulpiteer with whom the pleader for temper- 
ance became familiar — " very different from Dr. 
Guthrie, yet not one whit below him in influence or 
power, appealing to the intellect rather than to the 
feelings, yet at times very tender." 2 

Mr. Gough often heard, and greatly liked, Newman 
Hall, who preached in Surrey Chapel, w T here he spoke 
himself — his mother's first church home. 

Among others, not of the clergy, but co-workers in 



1 " Sunshine and Shadow," pp. 383-389. 

2 M Sunshine and Shadow," p. 389. 



204 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

good words and works, he recalls the Earl of Shaftes- 
bury, a nobleman in fact as well as by title, who 
carved his name in the hearts of England's poor ; 
not an orator, but " whose presence was mightier 
than speech." And John Bright is particularly men- 
tioned, with whom he passed a week in one of those 
charming British country-seats (in Brymbo, Wales), 
and to whom he listened for an hour (and could have 
listened for ever), as he spoke there to an extem- 
porized gathering of iron-workers upon the question 
of u Capital and Labor," showing their inter-depend- 
ence in words " incisive, clear as crystal," and of vivid 
power. 

With the Corn-Law reformers, too, he made an 
acquaintance — and Richard Cobden, Henry Vincent, 
and George Thompson were among the supreme 
names in the estimation of this kindred spirit. 

When in London his favorite resorts were the 
Houses of Parliament, where history is made, and 
Westminster Abbey, where history is preserved. But 
the streets of the modern Babylon were, perhaps, his 
chiefest haunt. Here he found human nature at first 
hand — endless in its diversity — with tragedies and 
comedies of actual life enacted on every corner — 
Punch-and-Judy shows galore — heroism and coward- 
ice, generosity and meanness, virtue and vice, elbow 
to elbow in the procession of humanity. 

The long term of the temperance advocate's volun- 
tary exile drew to a close. His final round was made 
in England, with the exception of eighteen days 
given to Ireland, and a hurried trip to Glasgow for a 
farewell address in that seaport, and to attend a 
good-bye soiree there. On Wednesday evening, the 



BRITISH MORALS, MANNERS, AND MEN. 205 

8th of August, he gave his last lecture in Exeter 
Hall. We quote his own account of this meeting : 

" Several American friends were present, among them the 
Rev. Dr. George B. Chiever and the Hon. Ichabod Washburn, 
of Worcester. Those who had signed the pledge in Exeter 
Hall had subscribed for a Bible, to be presented on the last 
evening I should lecture there. I had spoken ninety-five times 
in that Hall, and on the ninety-sixth and last the Bible was 
presented. It was one of the largest audiences I had met 
there. It was very exciting to me, and I was more nearly 
overcome than I remember ever to have been on any similar 
occasion. My dear friend, George Cruikshank, presided ; 
Judge Payne, of the Court of Quarter Sessions, was appointed 
to present the "Bible ; my first English friends, true, tried, and 
faithful, were there — dear Tweedie, Campbell, Howlett, the 
brothers John and Joseph Taylor, Spriggs, Hugh Owen, with 
many more from the London societies and from the provinces. 

" When the Bible was presented, I rose to reply, and no 
schoolboy, on his first appearance, could have felt more 
embarrassed. At last I said : ' My dear friends, as I look at 
this splendid testimonial of your good will — rich in morocco 
and gold, beautiful as a work of art and skill — I think of 
another book, a little one ; broken, torn, ragged, and imperfect — 
you would hardly pick it up in the street ; but to me, precious 
as your gift is to-night, more precious is that little book. On 
the illuminated fly-leaf of this I read : ' Presented Aug. 8, 
i860, to John B. Gough, on his leaving England for America, 
by those only who signed the pledge after hearing him in 
Exeter Hall, London.' On the brown, mildewed fly-leaf of the 
other book are these words : 'Jane Gough, born Aug. 12, 1776. 
John Gough, born Aug. 22, 1817. The gift of his mother, on 
his departure from England for America/ Two gifts, and two 
departures ! 

" As I began to review the past experiences since I left 
home, thirty-one years before, the flood of recollections came 
over me, combined with the tender associations connected 



206 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

with farewell, and I stammered, became nervous, and was 
unable to proceed. As I stood there, the unshed tears filling 
my eyes, Thomas Irving White rose, and taking me by the 
hand, said ; ' God bless him ! Give him three cheers ! 

" And the audience started to their feet, and with waving of 
hats and handkerchiefs, gave them with a will. That unsealed 
the fountain, and I bowed my head and cried like a very* bey.' 

On the ioth of August, a large number of the 
reformer's friends gathered at the M Northwestern " 
Railway- Station to see him off. Many brought, others 
had previously" sent, parting gifts. Amid smiles and 
tears the train puffed away to Liverpool. In the 
evening of that same day, he spoke in Concert Hall, 
Liverpool, to another vast assemblage. On 'the nth 
of August, i860, the embarkation occurred, the good 
steamer Arabia started, and the second British tour 
became a memory. In summing up the figures, Mr. 
Gough states that during the first British visit he 
lectured 438 times, and traveled 23,224 miles ; during 
the second, he delivered 605 addresses, and traveled 
40,217 miles — making in all 1,043 public appearances, 
and 63,441 miles of travel. 

The good he did is not so easily tabulated. Bui 
the Recording Angel may be depended upon for that 
record. 



Autobiography/' pp. 452, 453. 



PART IX. 

Renewed Usefulness at Home 



" I pity the man who can travel from Dan 
to Beersheba, and cry, ' 'Tis all barren. '" 
— Sterne, Sentimental Journey 



I. 



A CHANGE OF BASE. 



It so happened that Mr. Gough reached " Hillside" 
on his birthday, which was celebrated quietly but 
thankfully by all the inmates. A few days later there 
was a reception picnic in an adjacent grove; then a 
rousing reception in Worcester, at the Mechanics' 
Hall; and, finally, the truant was welcomed home by 
the clergy of the Commonwealth, at a great meeting 
in Tremont Temple, Boston; when an autograph- 
book, filled with the signatures (nearly five hundred 
in number) of those who had issued the address of 
greeting, with the inscription — " The Welcome of the 
Ministers of Massachusetts to John B. Gough, on his 
return from England in August, i860," — was pre- 
sented, which called forth an appropriate and feeling 
response from the recipient. 

Shadows lurk in sunshine. These public mani- 
festations of esteem were saddened by private sorrows. 
Mrs. Gough learned that one of her brothers, Luke 
Whitcomb, had been killed in a railroad accident two 
weeks before her return. She found a remaining 
brother at death's door with brain fever, and within 
a fortnight saw him pass through the somber 
portals. 

While doing what he could to comfort " Mary," 
14 



2IO JOHN B. GOUGH. 

the husband felt the shadow creep into his own heart 
— the kind hand that had been laid upon his shoulder 
to lead him to reform, was gone! He writes: 

"On my return home from New York, October 26th, i860, I 
was informed that Joel Stratton was very ill. I at once pro- 
ceeded to his home, and found him propped up by pillows in 
his chair, for his disease was of such a character that he could 
not lie down. The drops stood like beads on his forehead and 
on the backs of his hands, for he was very weak. I said to 
him, — 'God bless you, Stratton; thousands are thankful that 
you ever lived.' Feebly he whispered, 'Do you think so?' 
' Think so ! I have my English mail here,' — and I read him 
some extracts from a letter I had received from a lady, who 
wrote, ' How glad you must have been to meet your old friend, 
Joel Stratton, for whom we often pray, and whom we all love.' 
Looking at me with his pleasant smile, he said: ' When I laid 
my hand on your shoulder that night, I never dreamed all this 
would come to pass — did you ? ' ' No,' I said, ' but it has.' I 
kissed him, and left him, hoping to see him again. I was en- 
gaged in Montreal on the 29th, and on my return found he was 
dead. The funeral was to take place the next day, Novem- 
ber 7th." 

Mr. Gough spoke at this service, words of tender 
affection and appreciation, a heart-throb in each one: 

" I never knew him intimately, on account of his great mod- 
esty and diffidence. He always kept himself in the background. 
He was always the last man to take my hand at the door at 
my lecture when he was present. I owe to him all I am, since 
I have been worth anything to my fellow men ; and while I am 
almost daily annoyed by letters from persons who knew me in 
my former life, or who were acquainted with some who knew 
me, asking of me some assistance, Joel Stratton never once 



1 " Autobiography," p. 521. 



A CHANGE OF BASE. 211 

asked of me a favor. He never obtruded himself upon me ; 
never alluded to his instrumentality in my reform; never 
appeared to pride himself upon it, as if it were a meritorious 
deed." l 

Mr. Stratton left his family in financial straits. Mr. 
Gough counted it a privilege to settle an annuity of 
$300 upon the widow, which he paid as regularly as 
the date recurred, during her life. 

Now that he was at home again, he threw himself 
with his accustomed ardor into work — was here, 
there, and yonder, after the manner of what Wendell 
Phillips styled " a vagabond lecturer." Adventures 
were common. Once, while en route, the railroad was 
choked with snow; the train was hours late. st At a 
certain station," says Mr. Gough, " we took on board 
a large number of passengers who had been detained 
all night waiting for the cars, when one elderly, 
wo-begone man stood in the passage-way, and, look- 
ing about him — the seats being all occupied — said 
with a most lugubrious air and tone: 

" ' This is too bad! here I've ben laying on the 
floor in the depot all night, and now I can't find a 
place to set 9 

" A gentleman sprang from his seat, and said: 

" ' That is too bad; here's a place — set here! ' 

" Amid a noisy burst of merriment that surprised 
him, the man took the offered seat/' 2 

The professional season of 1860-61 witnessed a new 
departure on Mr. Gough's part. Until now he had 
spoken invariably upon temperance. He was suffering 
in body and mind from this "harping on one string." 



"Autobiography," p. 524. 2 " Autobiography," p. 535. 



212 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

He realized the need of variety in his labors if he 
would preserve his health and continue his useful- 
ness. Thus far, he had acted as a guerilla in the 
lecture field. The Lyceum courses of the States had 
almost never announced his name in their annual 
lists of lecturers. The fault was not theirs, but his. 
He had preferred to remain an outsider. The Lyceum 
method was to engage six, eight, or ten different 
names, as diversified as possible; his was, to give 
courses himself. At this time he was besieged with 
applications from Lyceum committees — each mail 
brought them by the dozen, from all points of the 
compass. Often they asked for a temperance lec- 
ture; frequently the demand was for another theme. 
After prolonged consideration, Mr. Gough consented 
to prepare a lecture on u Street Life in London " — a 
taking caption, and a topic upon which he could speak 
con amore. Very reluctantly and timidly he set about 
his task. Even more unwillingly did he appear in 
public with the result, visible in the shape of a pile 
of manuscript laid before him, and before all, upon 
the table. It was in New Haven, Connecticut, and 
in the Library course on November 21st, i860. The 
effort was a complete success. The notes did not 
interfere with his delivery; because, though he spoke 
from them, it was away from them! This New Haven 
success was repeated in Boston, Providence, Wor- 
cester, and elsewhere. 

Encouraged by the approbation accorded to his 
maiden effort, the orator prepared another lecture — 
" Lights and Shadows of London Life," which was 
equally well received. Others followed on other 
topics, usually a new one each season; " Here and 



A CHANGE OF BASE. 213 

There in Britain," " London," " Eloquence and Ora- 
tors," " Peculiar People," " Fact and Fiction," 
" Habit," " Curiosity," " Circumstances," and many 
more — all immensely popular, treated in a masterly 
way, and combining entertainment and instruction 
after the fashion characteristic of the author. 

In entering the Lyceum Mr. Gough came in direct 
competition with the great speakers of the country, as 
he had not done before, in a way which inevitably sub- 
jected him to comparison. He lacked the classic finish 
of Wendell Phillips, the rhetorical graces of Edward 
Everett, the piquancy of Starr King, the magnificent 
elocution of Dr. E. H. Chapin, the scholarly elabora- 
tion of Charles Sumner, the Addisonian style and 
witchery of Geo. Wm. Curtis, the " Beecherisms " of 
Plymouth Church's unprecedented Boanerges — but 
he had a charm and versatility all his own, and was 
and ever remained the only Gough! As for that 
supreme test of popularity, the ability to draw, he 
was from first to last the most reliable name on any 
and every lecture list, from the Bay of Fundy to the 
Golden Gate. 

Like all men of strong personality and aggressive 
earnestness, Mr. Gough had plenty of enemies both 
within and without the pale of temperance. These 
eagerly seized upon this change of base, and widely 
heralded it " a desertion of the cause." The lie 
refuted itself. For those who heard the new lectures 
perceived that the lecturer invariably worked into 
each prominent and repeated references to his old 
theme. Moreover, he continued throughout his life, 
whenever an opportunity occurred, to speak solely 
upon temperance, and often at his own charges. 



214 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

An idea of the demand for Mr. Gough's services 
may be gotten from the fact that in some years he 
refused upwards of one thousand applications. He 
devoted eight months to the platform, now as for- 
merly, and four to rest and preparation; and de- 
livered from one hundred and sixty to one hundred 
and eighty lectures in a twelvemonth. 

It was said, as though it were a sin, that " Mr. 
Gough grew rich on temperance." Supposing it 
were true, did he not constantly assert that there was 
more wealth in temperance than in drunkenness? 
Should it have surprised anybody that the most pop- 
ular speaker in the English world for forty-three 
years, was well paid ? How was it with successful 
men in other spheres? Men of equal prominence in 
the law got $50,000 and $100,000, in single cases. 
Popular physicians had incomes of $50,000 per annum. 
As for successful men of business, they became mill- 
ionaires. In the smallest places visited by Mr. Gough, 
there were sure to be men who had made fortunes 
out of some patent for a sleeve cuff-button, or by an 
invention to cut up hogs more expeditiously. Why 
" should not a man who went about doing good," and 
never spoke for nearly half a century without facing 
a crowd that taxed the hall or church in which he 
appeared, make money? Mr. Gough did not accumu- 
late as he might have done, because he had many and 
large demands on his purse. "Hillside" was a free 
hotel. He supported a number of people wholly or in 
part; some who had only a sentimental claim upon him. 
He gave or lent (which he found equivalent to giving!) 
to all who could trump up a decent story of desert or 
want. These are not the roads to wealth. Hence, his 



A CHANGE OF BASE. 215 

chief possessions were a generous heart and an open- 
hand — a few thousands only remained at the last to 
divide among heirs. 

Mr. Gough was sensitive on this point. He made 
a detailed statement of his average receipts for lec- 
tures from the commencement of his career until the 
period of the war, which we subjoin: 

Average Average 

Year. per Lecture. Year. per Lecture. 

1843 % 1-77 1854 $48.46 

1844 7.29 1855 50.14 

1845 H.42 1856 63.73 

1846 20.52 1857 62.90 

1847 21.06 1858 47.88 

1848 17.28 1859 49-3 2 

1849 19.12 i860 60.10 

1850 24.36 1861 88.37 

1 85 1 21.80 1862 90.83 

1852 21.67 1863 104.94 

1853 25.33 l 

Out of these sums, however, came all his expenses, 
including a traveling companion (usually Mrs. Gough, 
in earlier years, and, later, either an agent or a niece). 
From the year 1863 forward, Mr. Gough's fees 
were higher than the highest of the averages he 
tabulates. But it was money earned and merited, 
and satisfactory alike to the payers and the payee. 
In connection with his table of receipt-, Mr. Gough 
says : 

" Let it stand; leaving me to be glad that to the temperance 
cause will he given the honor of one of its advocates seeking 
to advance it according to his ability, and his family not ' ask- 
ing bread' when he is laid aside — his work done. I have never 



Autobiography," pp. 247, 248. 



2l6 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

felt it an honor to the cause that its chosen workers should be 
so ill-provided for in its service, that the posthumous testi- 
monial, or the earlier subscription paper, should be the only 
reliance of broken health, or support of beloved ones." 1 

The years immediately following the temperance 
advocate's return to America from his second British 
campaign for reform, were the most terrific in the 
history of the New World — the years of the Civil War. 
He was a loyal American, anti-slavery, freedom-lov- 
ing, and therefore intensely sympathetic with the effort 
to emancipate the slaves and save the Union. He 
acquitted himself as a patriot should, and put voice 
and purse at the command of the country in " times 
that tried men's souls/' We yield the floor to Mr. 
Gough, and let him summarize his connection with 
the historic struggle in his own language: 

" I did what I could in aid of our noble soldiers who fought 
and suffered for the dear old flag, and the perpetuity of the 
Union. While memory serves me, I shall never lose out of it 
those years so full of thrilling interest, from the first cry of the 
■ bombardment of Fort Sumter,' that woke the echoes of the 
silent streets at midnight. Then followed the running to and 
fro, and men's voices were heard like the lowmutterings of the 
coming storm. How I live over and over again that first 
dreadful, half-waked sense of the nation being suddenly called 
to suffer and sacrifice. Boys seemed to have become men, 
and men more manly in a night. Then came the tramp of 
armed men, not for review but service, — stern, hard service. 
How men sang 'Glory, Hallelujah !' in the streets as they 
marched, while women wept. How vivid is the remembrance 
of the sleepless nights, while our army seemed like endangered 
absentees from home, — of the first news of battle, — then of 



1 " Autobiography," p. 249. 



A CHANGE OF BASE. 217 

disaster, — the terrible days in the Chickahominy, — the Wilder- 
ness, — the suspense about Petersburg, — the defeats that were 
but steps to victory, — hope and fear alternating, — then how 
the horizon grew brighter as we came to the Emancipation 
Proclamation, — and through all this the long lines of hospitals 
all over the land, full of suffering, and not seldom, too, of a 
glory not of this world, — the homes where sorrow came and 
staid, — the uncounted heroisms, — the shameful defections, — 
and the quiet, watchful, trustful attitude of the black race, on 
either side of which such powers were arrayed, and over whose 
rights this long conflict really raged, while the whole nation 
was learning to ■ suffer and be strong.' Not until many years 
of peace shall we be able to estimate truly the times when 
every ear was strained to catch tidings from every breeze, and 
the years were full of the most sublime history." } 



Autobiography/' pp. 546 and 547. 



II. 



FETE DAY AT " HILLSIDE. 



Mr. and Mrs. Gough had no children. They man- 
aged to keep their house full of little ones for 
all that. When Mrs. Gough's younger brother died, 
in i860, he left his widow with five girls and a 
son. Five of these were domesticated at " Hillside." 
One of the girls (Mamie) died after a few years. The 
rest were fathered and mothered by John and Mary 
Gough, and trained for usefulness. " Since i860," 
he remarks, " seven children have been members of 
our family; so if children are sunbeams, our home 
has been bright with them." 

After the death of Mrs. Jane Gough, Mr. Gough's 
father had married again. A half-brother by this 
marriage had come to " Hillside " in 1848, at five years 
of age, and had been likewise looked after and settled 
in life. The orator's married sister had three sons. 
That family was prosperous, and required no aid. 
The half-brother resided in Worcester. The sister's 
home remained in Providence, whither she had gone 
at her marriage. 

In 1868, November 24th, the twenty-fifth anni- 
versary of the marriage of John and Mary Gough oc- 
curred. " Let us have a silver wedding ! " cried the 
young folks at " Hillside." The couple immediately 



FETE DAY AT "HILLSIDE. 219 

concerned, shook their heads — they would not come 
before their friends as beggars of presents, and wished 
the celebration to be confined to their own household. 
It was not so to be. The date became known. Friends 
in Worcester and in Boston insisted upon a demon- 
stration. Other friends across the sea were reached 
and interested by correspondence. The Goughs 
finally agreed to keep open house on the occasion. 
Special express trains ran east and west, to and from 
Worcester for the fete. Free coaches were driven 
from the city to " Hillside " and back again. Hun- 
dreds of well-wishers thus appeared and disappeared. 
Refreshments were provided in abundance, and the 
tables, set both in the dining and the breakfast rooms, 
were occupied by a constant succession of guests. 
After extending their congratulations, visitors wan- 
dered through the house, admiring the nicknacks 
scattered around, each one a gift, and thus freighted 
with significance, — the silver ink-stand on the library 
table, — the set of English china, with a portrait of 
Mr. Gough on each piece, — the superb collection of 
Cruikshankiana (twelve hundred plates), — the endless 
photographs presented by different temperance soci- 
eties, — the English farewell gift of plate, in i860, — 
the welcome signed by nearly five hundred ministers 
of all denominations on his return to the United 
States, — the memorials signed by leading citizens on 
both sides of the Atlantic, in honor of John B. Gough 
at various times, — above all, the great volumes of sig- 
natures to the temperance pledge, procured by Mr. 
Gough himself, over one hundred and fifty thousand 
in number, — all were viewed, commented upon, and 
carefully replaced where found. 



220 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

Public exercises were held in the " Hillside " gym- 
nasium. Addresses were made by representative 
men, valuable presentations of silver followed, and 
one of the recipients, speaking for " self and Mary," 
replied at length. We give his closing sentences: 

" I must be permitted to say how gratifying it is to me on 
this occasion to be surrounded by so many of my Worcester 
friends. You knew me, many of you, in the darkest days of my 
life, — in my poverty and obscurity. You have seen me among 
you, going in and coming out before you these many years. 
In Worcester I signed the pledge; in Worcester I married; in 
Worcester I have lived and been known so long ; and it is par- 
ticularly gratifying to me to know that you who know me best, 
should see fit to offer this splendid testimonial of your esteem 
and confidence." * 

The presents came from everywhere — across the 
continent and across the sea. They were very nu- 
merous and very valuable, and hence were kept in a 
safe-deposit vault. But their highest value lay in the 
thought and esteem of which they were the visible and 
beautiful expression. 

A few days afterwards, Mrs. Gough uttered her 
feelings in the following letter, addressed to the Com- 
mittee of Arrangements, which we quote, because it 
refers to and brings out a trait in her husband's char- 
acter well worthy of emphasis: 

"Hillside," November 28, 1868. 
*' Gentlemen — As I return to the accustomed quiet of our 
home again, after the stir and anticipation of our ' silver- 
wedding ' day, and live over in memory the brightness of that 
event, I feel that we owe you no common thanks, for ' pleas- 



Autobiography," p. 543. 



FETE DAY AT "HILLSIDE." 22 1 

ures of memory ' beyond our thought, and for organizing an 
opportunity for such beautiful expressions of good will as met 
us then. 

" Whenever we look 'over the receding years, it will hence- 
forth always be that we must do so through that bright day in 
November, 1868, when yourselves and so many others recog- 
nized so delightfully both the toils and the results of those 
varnished years. 

" It has given fresh impulse to our grateful remembrance of 
the God and Saviour who has led us so lovingly all the way; 
and we do not forget that He has ordered, that though a cool 
draught by the wayside-spring does not release from all sense 
of a toilsome path, it does so refresh as to strengthen for the 
'hill difficulty ' of the future. 

" In all the kind things said and done that day for myself 
personally, there was one omission, and that inevitable under 
the circumstances. In the recognition of my husband's work 
and life in the past twenty-five years, none but myself could 
have said how much I was indebted for whatever of success has 
been my own in our united lives, to the generous trust and 
confidence, the unfailing regard, that have always recognized 
our interests as one, — which have left head and hands free, — 
made such a thing as a struggle for ' rights ' unnecessary, — and 
rejoiced in such fruitage of that trust and love as makes the 
bond that binds us together so much stronger than twenty-five 
years ago, while losing not the greenness and freshness of its 
earlier time. 

" With heartfelt thanks for all the wide and substantial sym- 
pathy expressed on that occasion, and with the hope that the 
truest peace may always abide in the homes represented at 
' Hillside/ on that day, I am, gentlemen, 

" Very gratefully yours, 

" Mary E. Gough." j 

Mr. Gough's little " Autobiography," prepared and 



Autobiography," pp. 543, 544. 



222 JOHN B. BOUGH. 

published at the outset of his career, had been so 
steadily popular and useful, that his friends urged 
him to revise and enlarge it, and bring it down to date. 
This task he was prevailed upon to undertake. The re- 
sult was the large volume entitled, "Autobiography 
and Personal Recollections of John B. Gough," which 
Cruikshank partially illustrated, and which appeared in 
1871. 'Tis intensely readable; but would have been bet- 
ter had some literary friend revised it. This, however, 
was another of Mr. Gough's touchy points. He never 
claimed any literary ability: but he did wish to be 
thought the author of his own book. So much had 
been said regarding the first "Autobiography's" not 
being his own production, that he resolved to fore- 
stall all denial of his paternal relation to the second, 
by keeping the manuscript and proof-sheets wholly 
in his own hand. He thus secured his credit as a 
writer, but injured his reputation as an author. 

With regard to the disputed authorship of the 
original life, he says: 

"John Ross Dix, then calling himself John Dix Ross, was 
an inmate of my family, and I, pacing the room, dictated the 
matter to him, he being a good shorthand writer. When he 
had copied it out, we read it together and made alterations; 
and I wish to state that, excepting only three, or at most four, 
instances, my language, not his, was used." ' 

The speaking and the writing habits are distinct. 
Great speakers have seldom been great writers. The 
elaboration and condensation, essential in composi- 
tion, refine away and destroy the idiomatic energy 
and fire which make the charm of popular oratory. 



1 " Autobiography," p. 545. 



FETE DAY AT " HILLSIDE. 223 

Addison said he could not think without a pen in his 
hand. A pen in the lips usually gags the most elo- 
quent of men. Mr. Gough was not an exception to 
this rule. He wrote entertainingly, but often incor- 
rectly. Inaccuracies, unnoticed in the rush of his 
utterances on the platform, insist on notice in cold 
type. However, the autobiographer never aimed at 
a literary reputation, and would probably have dis- 
missed criticism, as Father Taylor, the famous pastor 
of the Boston Seamen's Bethel, used to do — " My 
verb has lost its nominative, but I'm bound for the 
Kingdom of Heaven! " 



III. 



FOOTPRINTS OF RUM. 



A rumseller attended one of Mr. Gough's lectures 
at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in the 'seventies. 
The speaker had referred to the "damnable results" 
of the liquor traffic. 

"Mr. Gough," said the rumseller, " I've been in the 
business you denounce all my life — I never saw the 
4 damnable results' which you paint in such lurid 
colors." 

" Well," was the reply, " suppose that, standing 
here in Portsmouth, you should take a gun and begin 
to fire it across the Piscataqua river in the direction 
of Kittery, on the opposite bank. Presently, some 
one rushes over here and says, * Stop that firing! 
You've killed half a dozen people over there in Kittery, 
already,' ' Pshaw! ' you answer. ' I've stood here 
and fired a good many times — I've never seen any 
dead folks.' ' No,' retorts the man from Kittery, 
i because you are not where they are. If you want to 
know the facts in the case go where the shots strike? " 
We propose in this chapter to follow Mr. Gough to 
the places where the shots strike. 

He had been struck himself. He could and did 
speak from experience. He knew that the first 
" damnable result " of the drink is felt and shown by 



FOOTPRINTS OF RUM. 225 

the victim. His nature is inverted. The will, the 
heart, the actions are all twisted from normal into 
abnormal relations. A rational being becomes irra- 
tional. A man is turned into a devil. Whiskey " sits 
as God in the temple of God." The drunkard's lit- 
urgy is mania a potu. Self-respect gone, — honor gone, 
— natural affection gone, — industry gone, — reputation 
gone, — property gone; — such are the common concom- 
itants of drunkenness. 

Mr. Gough tells of two clergymen of whom he had 
personally known. The first, was one of the best 
Greek scholars of the day. He began to drink; sank 
low and lower; and was one day dragged half- 
naked from under the bench of a dive. He was taken 
to the house of a friend, kept there four weeks, and 
sent away " clothed and in his right mind." While in 
the house of his benefactor he stole postage-stamps 
to exchange for liquor. And ten days after he went 
away, he was discovered sans hat, sans coat, sans 
shoes, sans everything, — drunk and begging for alms! 

The second of this clerical brace was a man under 
whose ministry thousands once sat with profit. 
Drink brought him so low that he often preached one 
or another of his old sermons in the bar-room of a 
tavern to degraded men and dissolute women for ten 
cents ! 

" I saw an interesting little girl, who had hip com- 
plaint," says Mr. Gough. " Her mother sold her to a 
villainous tramp for two pairs of stockings — then 
sold the stockings and got drunk on the proceeds." 

This leads us to call attention to a second " dam- 
nable result " of drinking, viz., its domestic ravages. 
Whatever deteriorates a man deteriorates his sur- 



226 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

roundings, and especially his dependants. The 
drunkard's family is, by common consent, the most 
pitiable of objects. " I have witnessed scenes/' re- 
marks Mr. Gough, " that have haunted me for days. 
In company with a friend, I once called on a man 
who had formerly been a gentleman of position, but 
who was now living on an annuity of $500 — a com- 
parative pittance saved from the wreck of his fortune. 
His wife, a woman of refinement, had been very ill. 
When we arrived we found the man drunk, sitting by 
the fire, smoking, the wife lying dead on a miserable 
pallet in the room. The drunkard was making a 
great noise, and declaring she was not dead. The 
gentleman with me laid his hand on him and said : 

" ' Now, you keep still ; your wife lies there dead, 
and I will not permit this noise.' 

" The drunkard sprang to his feet, exclaiming : 
"' I'll let you see whether she is dead or not.' 
" Before we could prevent, he sprang like a demon 
to the bedside, and dealt on the upturned face of the 
dead woman a terrific blow with his fist. Oh, I heard 
the sound of that blow for weeks, at night and by 
day ! " 

Here are some extracts from a letter written in 
Philadelphia to Mr. Gough, revealing scenes in a 
domestic tragedy in that city : 

" Some few years ago I was in business at No. 30 Market 

street, at which time a man named J C applied to me 

for work. He was quite genteel in appearance, and I gave 
him work, which was satisfactorily done. For some time I 
continued to employ him; but he seldom came himself for or 
with his jobs. His wife was in the habit of coming to the 
store, and on one occasion I asked her why John did not him- 



FOOTPRINTS OF RUM. 227 

self bring- in the work, when she reluctantly told me of her 
fears to trust him out, if it could be avoided, lest in his weak- 
ness he should drink to excess, when he was sure to abuse 
her. So long as he kept from liquor, however, he was affec- 
tionate, industrious, and as good a husband as any woman 
could wish for." 

After relating scenes of distress, imprisonment, 
brutality almost beyond belief — revelations of sicken- 
ing and revolting cruelty — he goes on : 

" They had adopted a child, and John was very fond of the 
babe, and his wife became very much attached to it. 

" He left home one morning early, came back about eleven 
o'clock; he was drunk, and he then said that it was time the 
child had gone after its mother — that he was not going to be 
troubled with other people's brats. However, he soon went 
out again, and did not return home until just about dusk. 
When he staggered up-stairs, the windows in the room were 
raised, as the weather was quite warm. His wife was just in 
the act of lighting the lamp as John went over to the settee, 
upon which she had just laid the child. Without a single 
word, he picked up the child and threw it out the window. 
The woman flew down the stairs to the street, and there she 
found the babe — it was dead ; the head was smashed. She 
fainted at the sight. Oh, it was horrible ! A crowd soon col- 
lected. She was, with the child, taken into the house. And 
now she was in a dilemma ; her husband was a murderer, and 
yet she loved him still ; for she knew, or felt then, that it was 
not his nature to commit a violent wrong, save when his action 
was controlled by rum. She therefore sought by stratagem to 
release him from any charge, and battled a little while with 
her conscience, and then, with grief and sorrow depicted on 
her countenance, she told these persons around her that she 
had been sitting at the window with the child in her arms, 
where she had fallen asleep, and that the child rolled out of 
her arms and fell to the pavement. Unfortunately for her, she 



228 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

was believed. The child was buried, and there was nothing 
afterward said about it. John sometimes spoke of it, but never 
without bringing tears in his eyes. She believed that he never 
forgave himself for having committed the murder." 

The man's habits grew worse. At last, after suffer- 
ing the torments of the damned, his wife left him. 
He could not discover her whereabouts. The writer 
goes on : 

" One Sunday he came to my house, and, as he appeared to 
be sober, I invited him in. He apologized for calling on 
Sunday, but wished to know if his wife still worked for me, or 
if I had seen her lately. I told him she had done no work for 
me for many months, and that the last time I saw her she told 
me she was living in New Jersey. He then said that he met 
her in the street the night before (Saturday) ; that she would 
not speak to him ; and that if he could find her he would kill 
her. He appeared much irritated. I then talked with him, 
and tried to convince him that he alone was in fault ; that if 
he would abandon rum there was no doubt happiness in store 
for him ; that I would give him employment ; and that if he 
would keep sober and industrious his wife would find it out 
and return to him. I suppose he staid an hour ; and before 
he left he became softened, and promised to reform. 

" On the following Sunday, about noon, as I was walking in 
the neighborhood of the Exchange, I saw a crowd around a 
bulletin board. I crossed over, and judge of my surprise when I 
read as follows : ' Horrid Murder ! Last evening, at nine o'clock, 

a man named John C , a tailor by trade, followed his wife 

into a house in Front street, below South street. She had been 
out in the street for a bucket of water ; he saw and followed 
her up into the third story, when he stabbed her in forty differ- 
ent places. The screams attracted persons to the spot ; and 
when they attempted to take hold of him, he cut himself across 
the stomach, and died in a few moments, having committed a 



FOOTPRINTS OF RUM. 229 

double murder. At the inquest, it was proved that he was 
under the influence of rum.'" 

These incidents suggest a third " damnable result" 
of this appetite — crime. The chaplain of a prison 
once told Mr. Gough that seven-ninths of the com- 
mitments there were due to drink. Statistics show 
that three-fourths of the crimes would be uncom- 
mitted, and that three-fourths of the prisons would 
be empty and useless, were it not for liquor. The 
Bench and the Bar corroborate the statisticians. The 
courts, the police, the whole repressive machinery of 
government, from the arrest up to the gallows, — are 
the bubbles that float on a glass of rum. Mr. Gough 
quotes an ex-convict as writing: 

" During my stay in prison, the question kept rising in my 
mind, what brings all these men here ? Day after day I asked 
those with whom I came in contact, what brought them to 
prison ? I got as an answer the same dull, dismal old story, 
over and over again — rum did it." 

In a letter to Mr. Gough, Canon Farrar refers to 
an English temperance newspaper which habitually 
publishes a ghastly column called, " Fruits of the 
Traffic, " made up of clippings from the daily press, 
and adds: " This column records calamity after calam- 
ity, crime after crime, shipwrecks, conflagrations, 
kickings and tramplings of women, mannings and 
murders of children, — all of which are directly attrib- 
uted to the effects of drink, by the declarations of 
judges, by the reiterated testimony of witnesses, and 
by the constant, remorseful confessions of the crimi- 
nals themselves." 

Experts, like Judge Noah Davis, of New York, and 



230 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

Mr. Fred H. Wines, together with a host of experi- 
enced and impartial observers, confirm Mr. Gough's 
" exaggerations," because they have seen where the 
shots strike. 

A fourth " damnable result " is the cost. Mr. Gough 
figured it out in three columns. In the first column, 
he set down the effects of liquor upon the individual, 
the family, and the State, as outlined in this chapter: 
this he called the moral cost. In the second column, 
he placed the direct amounts expended for liquor 
per annum; in the 'seventies, $750,000,000: this he 
called the money cost to the consumers. In the third 
column, he put the resultant pauperism, insanity, 
sickness, and crime. Three-fourths of the pauperism, 
three-fourths of the insanity, three-fourths of the 
sickness, and three-fourths of the crime are the spawn 
of drinking habits. 1 Ciphering out the expenses thus 
entailed, and adding it, the advocate of temperance 
set down the stupendous total of $1,350,000,000! This 
he called the indirect cost. Combining the totals of 
the second and third columns (for 'tis impossible to 
estimate the groans and tears and sorrows of the 
first), Mr. Gough showed the aggregate annual cost 
of the traffic in intoxicants in the United States, to 
be $2,000,000,000. 

The only possible offset to this sum, is the revenue 
paid by liquor to the Federal, State, and local author- 
ities — $135,000,000. So that the yearly cost to the 
American people of this trade is two thousand mil- 
lions of hard dollars (less the $135,000,000 returned 



1 Vide V Cyclopaedia of Temperance," Article on " Cost of the 
Drink Traffic." 



FOOTPRINTS OF RUM. 23I 

in taxes and licences) — without going into the im- 
possible mathematics of the degradation and misery 
produced by it! 1 Nor did John B. Gough leave the 
matter here. Having traced the footprints of rum, 
he proceeded to ask: 

Are we to pass from chamber to chamber of this great 
temple of abominations, and look at what we see, as though it 
were a cabinet of curiosities, and gaze coldly on all these scenes 
of shame and horror that are painted on its walls ; or are we 
to be aroused by these facts merely to talk the vague language 
of philanthropy, and to sigh over wretchedness, while we do 
not so much as lift a single finger to help the wretched ? " 2 

In the footprints of rum Mr. Gough recognized 
the cloven foot of the devil. And he believed it to be 
the coequal duty of Church and State to arrest and 
chain this devil for two thousand million years — a 
year for every dollar he cost the country in a twelve- 
month. 



1 This cost annually increases at the rate of from $40, 000,000 to 
$50,000,000. 

2 The facts and statements in this chapter are taken from " Sun- 
light and Shadow," chaps, xviii and xix. See also " Cyclopaedia of 
Temperance," in loco. 



PART X. 

The Third English Visit 



'Ah, how good it feels! 
The hand of an old friend." 

— Longfellow, Christus, Part III. 



I. 



AFTER EIGHTEEN YEARS. 

On the ioth of July, 1878, Mr. Gough accompanied 
by his wife and two nieces, sailed for Britain once 
more, to be gone for an indefinite time. His object 
was rest, and not campaigning. But, in compliance 
with urgent requests, he consented to make thirty 
public addresses at strategic points. 

The voyage was pleasant. Liverpool was safely 
and duly reached. There it seemed as though all 
temperance England had turned out to welcome the 
world-famous native of Sandgate. " The National 
Temperance League," the " United Kingdom Alli- 
ance " (former rivals, now, happily, in harmony), 
bands of hope, cold-water armies, local organizations, 
large numbers of reformed men, many of them 
rescued by Mr. Gough's eloquence or personal efforts, 
all with banners flying, the rub-a-dub-dub of drums, 
the blare of music, and hearty British cheers — extended 
a national greeting, and made the scene an epoch. 
The address of welcome contained the names of one 
hundred thousand teetotalers ! 

By-the-by, Mr. Gough gives the origin of the term 
teetotal. " At a meeting in Preston, England, he 
says, at which Joseph Livesey (one of the founders of 
the temperance movement in England) presided, a 



236 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

man named Dickey Turner said : ' Mr. Chairman, I 
finds as how the lads gets drunk on ale an* cider, an' 
we can't keep 'em sober unless we have the pledge 
total ; yes,, Mr. Chairman, tee-tee-total.' The man 
was a stammerer, and the term was born of his 
stammer. For Mr. Livesey instantly replied : ' Well 
done, Dickey — we will have it teetotal ! " : Then 
and there the first English total abstinence society 
was formed. 

From Liverpool, with his right hand aching and 
his ears ringing, the tourist went to London — magnifi- 
cent and splendid : rich, and poverty-stricken ; sober 
and drunken; Christian, and pagan — to change 
Dryden a little — 

" A ; /:. n s :■ various that it seemed to be 
Not one, but all mankind's epitome.' 1 

Here there was another hurricane of hospitable 
enthusiasm. A garden-party was given in his honor 
in the grounds of Westminster Abbey. Mr. Gough 
remarks : 

" If it is true that there are serin ns : stones,' where shall 
we go for a better sermon than to Westminster A '.try : 
It stands gray and hoary and majestic, rich with the memories 
of the past, and consecrated with the bones and ashes and 
reputations of the great ! All that Britain contained or con- 
tains of the illustrious or good, of genius or culture, 1 
trodden its aisles, have come hither to worship to admire, to 
mourn, or, it may be, afterlife's fitful fever, t: sleep. Here 
majesty, amidst pomp and splendor, has assumed the crown, 
and amid equal pomp and circumstance has laid it down; here 
the nation has mourned the bard whose verse is as immortal 



1 " Platform Echoes," p. 550. 



AFTER EIGHTEEN YEARS. 237 

as her tongue; and here she has wept the greatest of her 
statesmen — dead." l 

For the benefit of untraveled readers, and to locate 
the scene, Mr. Gough adds: " In the neighborhood of 
the Abbey we are in the center of English civiliza- 
tion, and near the brain of government — that Down- 
ing street from which England, Scotland, Wales, 
Ireland, aye, and lands remote, peopled by alien races, 
professing alien creeds, speaking alien tongues, are 
ruled; Royalty resides in close proximity; and in 
ermined gown and solemn wig and official pomp, the 
proud Peers of Britain assemble to legislate, not a 
stone's-throw from this sacred shrine. " 2 

Here, then, under the walls of historic Westminster, 
within sight of St. Stephen's, the teetotaler was feted. 
Around him thronged friends new and old — among 
the former, the American minister, and Dr. Arthur P. 
Stanley, Dean of the Abbey, already an historic figure 
in life, who spoke words of welcome, and personally 
played the cicerone to his guest; among the latter such 
of the " old guard " as survived — for eighteen years 
form a Niagara of fate into which friends as well as 
enemies pour, and are lost in the ghastly spray! 
Cruikshank, Dr. Guthrie, William Arnot, and many 
more, were missing; and the thought of them, and 
the heartache, brought a mist of tears into the visi- 
tor's eyes while smiles were on his face — a rainbow 
athwart a storm-cloud. 

After two or three weeks in the metropolis, during 
which Mr. Gough and the ladies with him were the 
recipients of marked social honors, the party crossed 



Sunlight and Shadow," p. 34. 2 " Sunlight and Shadow," p. 34. 



238 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

to the Continent. We will not follow them thither. 
They revisited the old haunts, snuggled into some 
new ones, but upon the whole had a wet time, as the 
weather was persistently unpropitious. Tourist life 
on the Continent is absolutely dependent on sunshine 
■ — a butterfly existence while it lasts. Hence, the 
Goughs, discouraged by the patter, patter, patter of 
the rain, scudded back to London, and took lodgings 
at No. 185 Piccadilly. They were gone a month. 

We suspect, if the truth were told, that the busy 
American, like most Yankees, natural or naturalized, 
took his pleasures sadly, and rather hurried the ladies 
on this trip. He was so used to work that he made 
work of play. To do nothing but gape, and eat, and 
sleep, and wake to gape again, made the restless lec- 
turer more fidgety than ever. He had no time for 
this — he had just arrived; and no time for that — he 
was just departing. Perhaps it was just as well for 
all concerned, that he should perspire back to smoky 
London, where he would surely find plenty to do, 
and vary his idleness. What a second nature habit 
is ! Those easy-going saunterers on the Parisian 
boulevards might have taught the rushing American 
how to moderate his pace and enjoy himself. He 
could certainly have taught them how to quicken 
their saunter into usefulness, and find enjoyment in 
the service of men. 'Tis pity they could not have 
swopped habits for awhile. 

Mr. Gough's initial speech was made in Mr. Spur- 
geon's Metropolitan Tabernacle, on Tuesday evening 
September 22d, to ari audience of over seven thou- 
sand people, with Sir Charles Reed, Member of Par- 
liament, a prominent man " in the city," and a total 



AFTER EIGHTEEN YEARS. 239 

abstainer in the chair. The speaker repeated his 
earlier oratorical and moral triumphs. Although now 
past sixty years of age, rotund in form, with Rip Van 
Winkle beard and half-gray hair, his hearers of 
eighteen years before marked no diminution in his 
fire on the platform or his zeal off of it; while the 
new generation acquainted with his name as a doubt- 
ful tradition, heard and saw for themselves, and were 
convinced that their elders had not exaggerated, and 
could not overstate the happy fact. 

The scene in Mr. Spurgeon's vast church, was re- 
peated at each of the lecturer's thirty appearances in 
various parts of Britain. But what amazed and de- 
lighted Mr. Gough was the discovery that the cause, 
of old denounced as fanaticism or weak sentimental- 
ity, was now established upon a sure basis of recog- 
nized common sense, and had won to its advocacy and 
practise very many of the most able and prominent 
of Englishmen — and in all walks of life. A quarter 
of a century earlier, ay, even eighteen years before, it 
had been difficult to get anybody who was anybody 
to preside at a teetotal meeting. Now it was a mere 
question of selection — the available celebrities were 
countless. The New England teetotaler recites with 
justifiable pride the names and titles of some of the 
chairmen at his meetings in 1878. As he enumerates 
them, there flit before us the men who made and 
marked Great Britain in the middle of the nine- 
teenth century: Samuel Morley, one of the merchant 
princes and philanthropists of London, "a tall, well- 
made man, w r ith serious, but intelligent and attractive 
face M — Canon Farrar, as well known abroad as at 
home, and author of the most popular of all recent 



240 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

lives of Christ — William Lawson, M.P., with an in- 
come of $500,000 a year, a "jolly good fellow/' but 
not in the bacchanalian sense, one of the wittiest men 
then in public life — the two leading physicians of the 
day, Dr. Richardson and Sir Henry Thompson, 
equally eminent as authors in their profession — the 
Lord High Chancellor, Earl Cairns, standing next to 
the throne in official circles, and chairman of the 
House of Lords, "a stately man, of chastened elo- 
quence, who did not need his gown and wig, or a seat 
on the woolsack, to impress the beholder" — the Duke 
of Westminster, "a small, thin, dark-complexioned 
man, not celebrated as an orator," nor needing such 
celebrity since he had enough as the wealthiest man 
in England — Samuel Bowly, a "city" magnate, tall, 
erect, and manly, who showed at seventy how well 
teetotalers can bear " the heat and burden of the day " 
— Sir Fitzroy Kelly, Lord Chief Baron of England, 
"with a fine, expressive countenance, and a wonder- 
ful power in his delivery, standing perfectly still, no 
gesture, the thumb of his right hand in his waistcoat 
pocket, simply talking" — John Bright, an old friend, 
new-met, greatest of England's orators in our day, 
and the friend of America when she needed friends 
inEngland; — these,and many others, were pronounced 
abstainers, and lent Mr. Gough the luster of their 
presence when he spoke. 

Quite as remarkable was the change in the attitude 
of the Established Church towards temperance re- 
form and reformers. Previously, a teetotal clergy- 
man of the Church of England was as rare as a white 
blackbird. Now, most of the blackbirds had turned 
white ! Ecclesiastical dignitaries crowded one an- 



AFTER EIGHTEEN YEARS. 241 

other in their willingness to be identified with the 
"Hillside" teetotaler while on his third circuit, and 
jostled against civil officials, also " willm'," like Bar- 
kis. Canon Farrar presided twice when Mr. Gough 
spoke in Exeter Hall. Dr. Temple, the Bishop of 
Exeter — the successor, before he entered the episco- 
pate, of Dr. Arnold, as master of the famous school 
at Rugby — was in the chair when Mr. Gough lectured 
at Plymouth. At Croydon, the Bishop of Rochester 
presided; at Owestry, the Bishop of Bedford; at Ox- 
ford, Canon Ellison; at Southampton, Bishop (then 
Canon) Wilberforce; at York, the Dean of the famous 
cathedral there; at Swansea, the Honorable Wm. 
Henry Fox Talbot, a savant, with medals enough to 
furnish a museum, the Lord Lieutenant, and " father 
of the House of Commons"; in Dublin, the Lord- 
Mayor; and in Glasgow the Lord-Provost, who also 
entertained the Goughs at his palatial residence. At 
Rochdale three Mayors were on the platform ('tis to 
be hoped the speaker was quieter than usual that 
night!) — his Honor of Rochdale in the chair, and 
their Honors of Bury and of Oldham, on either hand, 
in the full insignia of their office. 

Really, temperance had become fashionable in the 
very realm of Bass's ale. Nor did the unwonted 
presence of these grandees abash the orator or dull 
the edge of his incisiveness. In one of his London 
speeches he said: 

" Last Sunday, between twelve and one o'clock, I went down 
to the locality known as ' Seven Dials.' I went to see what could 
be seen there. There were crowds of people in the street. 
Many persons were surrounding an earnest temperance 
reformer, who was telling them some wholesome truths. I 
16 



242 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

looked at the people. There was one woman who seemed to 
me to have but one garment on her. It was a cold day. She 
stood shivering in the cold, but she had three pence in her 
hand, and stood watching the door of ' The Grapes.' I saw 
men hanging about, licking their white lips, — waiting for those 
doors to open at one o'clock. 1 I saw boys and girls of fifteen 
years of age, in the most wretched state of poverty. My heart 
ached as I saw those crowds waiting for the public-houses to 
open, all having their few pence clenched in their hands. The 
temperance reformer who spoke to them, said : ' Why, some of 
you haven't got any shirts on, and yet you are going to pay the 
money that should go to buy some into the brewery. What is 
the consequence ? The consequence is that you are shirtless, 
and that the people who ought to be engaged in supplying 
what you need, are without employment, because the ware- 
houses are overstocked. Why don't you buy, and make a 
market for linen, shirting, and leather, instead of making a 
market for beer, when you get nothing but misery by it ? ' 

"I stood and looked at the crowd, and then looked all over 
the front of that public-house ; and (I speak my own senti- 
ments) as I looked at the names on the sign — 

11 ' Trueman, Hanbury, and Buxton,' 

I thought — so help me God ! — I would not have my name on 
such a place for all the money spent in drink, and that is ;£i6o,- 
000,000 sterling a year. It is to me astounding that in Eng- 
land men should get their living and make money, and grow 
rich out of the pennies of the poor" * 

Great as the growth of temperance sentiment had 
been, Mr. Gough realized, as he moved about, that it 
must be even greater if England would witness the 
abolition of her most appalling curse. 

But it was encouraging to find the attention of 



1 In London, public-houses were closed until that hour on Sunday. 

2 " Platform Echoes/' pp. 608, 609. 



AFTER EIGHTEEN YEARS. 243 

Church and State directed to it, and the public con- 
science wide awake. 

Among those with whom Mr. Gough became in- 
timate at this time were Joseph Parker and the late 
Charles H. Spurgeon. He made pen-sketches of both 
of them. With regard to the former he writes : 

" Dr. Parker is a remarkable man. I often walked twice on 
the Sabbath from Piccadilly to Holborn Viaduct, a distance of 
two miles each way, and felt amply repaid for my eight miles' 
walk. . . . Let me give my impressions on hearing him 
for the first time. His first words revealed a magnificent 
voice. The reading of the hymn convinced one that he had 
studied elocution. The impressive manner in which he uttered 
the sentence, ' Let us worship God,' showed his perfect control 
over every intonation ; and the reading of the Scriptures mani- 
fested his knowledge of the power of appropriate emphasis. 
The prayer was beyond and above criticism. In the beginning 
of his discourse I was disturbed and annoyed by his manner, 
entirely new to me — thoroughly different from anything I had 
ever seen ; but I soon forgot his manner in the intense interest 
awakened by the sermon. . . . His utterance of words and 
sentences was occasionally startling. Once, in speaking of the 
bulwarks that were being broken down in these days of lax 
living and lax doctrine in the church, he said of one doctrine 
after another, gone! the Y)e\ 7 \\ t goneI and God — going ! No 
one can imagine the force and power of the intonation." l 

The American was a frequent visitor at Dr. Parker's 
house, where he found the great preacher " childlike 
— not childish." Their interchange of thought and 
feeling was free and stimulating. Referring to the 
charge of egotism made against Dr. Parker, he says : 

"What man, conscious of great power, with an influence 



1 " Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 397 and 399. 



244 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

sufficient to establish and maintain a church so complete in all 
its appointments, and with the ability to keep an audience 
week after week and year after year, rlliing the spacious edifice, 
with no diminution but rather an increase, till the place is be- 
coming too strait ; sustaining a Thursday-noon lecture at- 
tended by thoughtful men who crave and can only be satisfied 
with strong meat, and being able to meet all the demands of 
the intellectual throngs who attend his ministry; I ask, what 
man, conscious of all this, must not necessarily be self-con- 
fident, or rather self-reliant, and that not offensively ? There 
are some men so painfully conscious of their defects, short- 
comings, and failings, as not to realize and be thankful for the 
gifts God has given them — so excessively humble that their 
superfluity of humility is as painful to witness as the egotism 
of another." ] 

Mr. Gough heard Mr. Spurgeon away back at the 
time when both made their London entree. With a 
limited education (four years at a common school in 
Colchester, and a few months in an agricultural col- 
lege at Maidstone), the inspired boy preached his 
first metropolitan sermon to a congregation of two 
hundred people in a church (Park Chapel) that seated 
twelve hundred. " Before three months." says Mr. 
Gough, u the question in London was - I remember 
it well in 1853 — ■ Who is this Spurgeon ? ' ' 

He appreciatively notes the successive upward steps 
in the career of his friend: 

M In one year Park Chapel was enlarged, during which time 
Spurgeon preached in Exeter Hall. It was in that hall that I 
first heard him, as a young man drawing immense audiences. 
He had secured the ear of the people. In 1856 Park Chapel 
was inadequate to receive the crowds who flocked to h^ar him, 



" Sunlight and Shadow," p. 



AFTER EIOHTF.FN YEARS. 245 

and the Royal Surrey Gardens Music Hall was engaged. 
Here he preached to twelve thousand people every Sunday 
until the present Tabernacle was finished — in 1861. This seats 
five thousand and five hundred persons, with standing-room 
for one thousand more. When the Church removed from Park 
Chapel it had eleven hundred and seventy-eight members. In 
1877 the membership was five-thousand one hundred and fifty- 
two. The immense amount of work performed by this one 
man is astonishing. He has published fifteen hundred ser- 
mons in volumes, and more than one hundred singly. He has 
published a commentary on the Psalms in five volumes called 
the ' Treasury of David.' He has issued sixteen other works, 
beside compiling a hymn-book, conducting a monthly maga- 
zine, and writing prefaces and introductions to other men's 
works." 1 

Mr. Gough, like every one else who heard him, was 
instantly attracted by Spurgeon's voice — " rich, 
melodious, under perfect control. Twelve thousand 
people could hear him distinctly in the open air, 
twenty thousand in the Crystal Palace." 

He drove Mr. Gough out to see his " Orphanage," 
at Stockwell, where there was then two hundred and 
forty orphans; and the visitor speaks enthusiastically 
of what he saw — especially of a scene at the bedside 
of a little dying pauper waif, whom the great preach- 
er's beneficence had rescued, and with whom he 
engaged in prayer and conversation in the last dread 
hour — greater and grander, then, Gough thought, 
than when swaying the mighty multitude at his will. 

Of Spurgeon's pithy and quaint style, his friend 
gives several specimens. A contentious man, he calls 
"a stoker for Satan's fires." One who speaks well 



lli Sunlight and Shadow," p. 402. 



246 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

and means ill, he says, " hangs out the sign of the 
angel, while the devil keeps the house. " 

The companionship of Parker and Spurgeon was a 
well-spring of refreshment to Gough through all the 
months of this third English visit. It was in the 
latter's Tabernacle that he uttered his celebrated 
witticism on the hornet: "We are assured that alco- 
hol is nutritious — it makes men lively! (a pause) well, 
if a man should sit down on a hornet's nest it would 
make him lively — but I question how much nutrition 
there would be in it! " 



II. 



THE STREETS OF LONDON. 



Being in London for recreation, with plenty of 
time at his disposal, the New-England observer and 
exponent of the poor and miserable, spent a great 
many hours in the streets. They were to him thea- 
ter, circus, panorama, church — something of each 
and a good deal of all. He was as fond of them as 
Dr. Johnson was, as Charles Lamb was, as Dickens 
was, and as Phillips w T as of the cow-path thoroughfares 
of his native Boston. " The people in the London 
streets, by day or night," he confesses, "fascinated 
me, and I never wearied of strolling about and watch- 
ing them." 

With regard to its demarcations, Mr. Gough re- 
marks: 

" London is several cities rolled into one. If you walk along 
Regent street, it is a city of gorgeous shops; if you turn to the 
West End, of parks and palaces ; if you travel to St. Giles, of 
gin and dirt; in Belgravia, it is grand and rich; in Pimlico, it 
is poor and pretentious ; in Russell Square, it is well-to-do. 
. . . Fashion migrates to the west ; actors and musicians 
live about Brompton ; the medical students take possession of 
whole streets in the vicinity of their respective hospitals ; the 
inns of court are chiefly inhabited by barristers ; France, Italy, 
Hungary, Poland, you will find represented by the cafes and 
cigar-shops, billiard-rooms, and restaurants of Leicester Square ; 
Wapping, Rotherhithe, and the Commercial Road abound with 



248 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

sailors of every nation under the sun ; Quakers live about Ed- 
monton and Stoke- Newington ; Jews congregate in Hounds- 
ditch. In short, the swells in the parks, the millers in Mark 
Lane, the graziers in the new Cattle Market, the prim, pale 
lads in ' the city/ the silk-weavers in Spitalfields, and the sugar- 
bakers of Whitechapel, really form distinct communities, and 
seem absolutely localized in their ideas." 

As in all great cities, a crowd easily gathered. 

" One evening," says Mr. Gough, " I started in a 
cab from the Midland Railway station for Piccadilly, 
accompanied by a lady. We had passed the ' Seven 
Dials' and were in Gerard street, when the horse 
staggered and fell. At once a crowd of men, women, 
boys, girls, started out of the very ground. 

" ' Vot's hup, cabby ? ' 

" * Vy, don't yer see vot's hup ? My 'orse is down ; 
that's vot's hup.' 

" ' He's got the staggers,' said one, ' blest if he 
'asnV 

" i Vun of ye sit on 'is 'e'd, and vee'l git 'im out of 
the shafts in a jiffy/ said another. 

" Such a din ! boys laughing, girls screaming at 
every fresh struggle of the wretched horse, or pitying 
him, with ' Poor thing ! Vot a shame ! ' The beer- 
soaked cabman was perfectly bewildered. Some one 
shouted — * 'Eres the bobbies ' (police). By their 
direction, we transferred our luggage to another cab; 
and, paying half a crown in fees, beside the cabby's 
fare, we got away, leaving the poor horse on the 
ground and the crowd undiminished." ' 

Our stroller comments upon the street boys and 



1 M Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 60-61. 



THE STREETS OF LONDON. 249 

girls: "I found them, after twenty years, just the 
same — keen, sharp, impudent. Coming through the 
Strand, a flake of soot fell on my mustache. I began 
to run my fingers through the hair, when a ragged 
bit of a boy looked up at me, and said, with a per- 
fectly sober face, ' It looks werry nice, sir ! ' " 1 

Mr. Gough was amused yet saddened by these 
children of the pave — their home, a cellar — their 
father, a drunkard — their mother, a shameless beggar 
— their sisters, with livid, withered, sad faces, plying 
their dreadful trade — the brothers, trained to crime, 
and scientifically wicked. 

" At one of the ragged schools, on a Sunday night," 
he says, " as the clock struck eight, several of the boys 
rose to go. ■ The lesson is not over/ said the teacher, 
' stay/ The reply was, ' We must go to business.' 
' What business ? ' ' Why, we must catch the people 
as they come from the churches and chapels.' They 
were pickpockets! " 

Dickens's picture of Fagtn and his pupils was not 
fiction, but fact. One of these boy thieves said to 
Mr. Gough: " There ain't no genius in pickin' a 
pocket; that's only slight o' 'and — anybody could do 
that. I'll tell yer vere the genius is. Ven you've got 
a gent's vipe (handkerchief) out of his pocket, and he 
turns round and says, ' Somebody's picked my 
pocket! ' and you looks 'im right in the face, and says, 
' 'As there, sir ? that's werry 'ard on you sir, — that's 
cheek, that's genius.' " 

Some of the explorer's experiences were far from 
pleasant. 



11 Sunlight and Shadow," p. 61. 



250 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

u On a certain occasion/' he writes: 

" I was strolling on a tour of observation up Holborn Hill — 
it was before the splendid Holborn Viaduct was engineered — 
and I turned into Gray's Inn Lane. On the opposite side of 
the street, around the entrance to a court, in a very bad local- 
ity, I saw a group of tatterdemalions, men, women, and chil- 
dren, some fluttering in rags, the very refuse of the slums, 
evidently in a state of great excitement ; something out of the 
common order had occurred. 

M As 1 was curious to know, for I often learn some lessons from 
the street folk, and get some ideas of strange phases of human 
nature in a crowd, I crossed over. Expecting to hear some 
foul language, somewhat in characater with the appearance of 
the crowd I was approaching. I soon heard expressions like these : 
' Ah, God bless me, deary, deary me, poor thing : well, well, ah 
well, poor thing.' These were words of sympathy from human 
hearts for human sorrow. A man had fallen from a scaffold in 
a neighboring street, and was being brought home dead ; and 
all this commotion was sympathy for the newly-made widow 
and her children. On the outskirts stood a very bad-looking 
man, with the closely cropped bullet-head. The bull-neck, the 
tiger-jaw, the small light-blue eye, made a sinister-looking 
animal, one you would not care to meet alone in a dark street at 
night. He had a cat-skin cap, a belcher handkerchief tied 
round his neck, and he evidently belonged to what are termed 
loosely the criminal classes. I said to him : 

M ' What's the matter here, sir ? ' 

•' He turned his eye full on me for a moment, and then said 
to the crowd : 

Stand out of the vay, vill ye ! 'ere's a swell vants to know 
vat's the matter.' 

" I was not much of a swell, but I did want to know what the 
matter was. 

"A woman told me the facts of the case, and pointing to a 
miserably faded creature, with three or four ragged children 
clinging to her skirts, said ; 



THE STREETS OF LONDON. 251 

"•That's the woman that's lost her husband.' 

" I was startled by this time to find that the crowd had closed 
in upon me, and I must confess I was frightened ; my knees 
grew weak, and I felt a dryness of my lips and throat from 
apprehension. Quickly it flashed through my mind — quicker 
than I can write it, — ' Here I am in the midst of a crowd of 
the worst characters in London. I am shut out from all help ; 
no policeman near should they see fit to assault me. I have a 
gold watch in my pocket, gold and silver in my purse. Some 
of these men and boys are thieves by profession ; I do not like 
it. They might strike me a blow, drag me down this court, 
and no one would be the wiser. I should be missing,' etc.. etc. 
All this was very foolish, perhaps. The bullet-headed man was 
close to me, and I did not like that ; my sensations were not 
agreeable. 

" Summoning up courage, I turned to this man, and pointing 
to the woman, I said : 

" ' Is this woman very poor, sir ? ' 

" He replied, savagely : 

'* * Vat do you mean by that, hey ? Poor ? God Almighty 
help the woman ! Look at her, vill ye ? ' 

" I did look : all the womanhood apparently crushed out of 
her. So I boldly pulled out my purse, as I said : 

" ' Well, she looks as if she needed help ; poor thing, I am 
willing to help her. I'll give her a half sovereign, if it will do 
her any good. .Shall I give it to you, sir, or to some of these 
women, or shall I give it to the poor woman herself ? ' 

" ■ God bless you, sir,' said one of the women ; ' give it to 'er; 
she needs it bad.' 

" * Thank you, sir,' said another. 

" One with a blackened eye, said, holding up a child : 

" ■ 'Ere's one of the children, sir.' I turned to go away. A 
passage was opened for me ; and though I am convinced there 
were men there who would have garrotted me for a shilling, or 
brained me for half a crown, yet every man as I passed out of 
the crowd, touched his rag of a cap, and said, ' thank ye, sir! ' 
even my friend with the belcher and the cat-skin cap fitting 



252 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

close to his cropped head, looked more like a human being 
than an animal." 1 

The London costermongers 2 (strolling retailers of 
vegetables) greatly interested Mr. Gough. They form 
a numerous class, numbering over sixty thousand. 
He says of them: 

" The working life of a coster is spent in the streets, and his 
leisure is very much devoted to the beer-shop, the dancing-room, 
and the theater ; yet there are exceptions, some of them being 
very sober, orderly, God-fearing people. Home has few 
attractions to a man whose life is a street-life. They have 
their own beer- shops, theaters, and other places of amusement, 
They are rather exclusive, and like to be let alone. They are 
true to each other. If a coster falls ill, and gets into the hos- 
pital, he is visited by scores of his fellows. 
* " Religion is rather a puzzle to the costermongers. They see 
people coming out of church, and, as they are mostly well- 
dressed, they somehow mix up being religious with being 
respectable, and have a queer sort of a feeling about it. They 
will listen to the street-preacher; but I think the most unim- 
pressible of all with whom I have been brought into contact, 
on purely moral and religious subjects, are the London coster- 
mongers. They do not understand how it is possible that you 
can feel any interest in their spiritual welfare ; but if you 
relieve the necessities of any one in distress, you are at once 
popular. 

" Once near Houndsditch I saw some poor, pinched little 
creatures playing in the gutter. I said to one, ' Do you want 
an orange ? ' The child looked up, half timid, half scared, and 
said nothing. I stepped up to the stand and took an orange, 
and offered it to the child ; it was at once taken ; and then 



1 " Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 139-144. 

2 They got their name from a peculiar kind of apple, called 
M costard," which they used to sell. 



THE STREETS OF LONDON. 253 

they flocked around me, and I must have given twenty or 
thirty oranges away, when I saw a group of costers looking 
on. As I left the crowd, the men gave a hurrah, and said, 
' That's a gentleman '; whereas if I had offered them a tract, I 
might have had some chaffing. 

"The life of a coster-boy is a hard one from morning till 
night : at first hallooing for his father, then in business for 
himself with a barrow ; next he looks out for a girl to keep 
house for him. Very many are not married to the women with 
whom they live, yet they are very jealous, and sometimes 
behave very badly to the girl. One fellow, about sixteen, said, 
* If I seed my gal a-talking to another chap, I'd fetch her sich 
a punch of the 'ed as 'ud precious soon settle that matter.' 

"These boys are very keen ; as an old coster said, 'These 
yung 'uns are as sharp as terriers, and learns the business in 
half no time. I know vun, hate years hold, that'll chaff a peeler 
monstrous sewere.' 

" As I said, they have strange ideas about religion. In the 
' London Labor and London Poor ' there are very many inter- 
esting details in reference to this class. One of them said, ' I 
'ave heerd about Christianity: but if a cove vos to fetch me 
a lick of the 'ed, I'd give to 'im again, vether he was a little 
vun or a big 'un.' The idea of forgiving injuries and loving 
enemies seems to them absurd. One said, ' I'd precious soon 
see a henemy of mine shot afore I'd forgive 'im.' Said another, 
1 I've heerd of this 'ere creation you speaks about. In coorse 
God Almighty made the world, but the bricklayers made the 
'ouses, that's my opinion. I heerd a little about the Saviour: 
they seem to say He vos a goodish sort of a man ; but if He 
says that a cove is to forgive a feller as 'its 'im, I should say 
that he knows nothing about it.'" l 

It would be endless to follow Mr. Gough in all his 
investigations up in the garrets of poverty, down in 



1 " Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 94-96. 



254 JOHN B. GOUGH, 

the cellars of misery, among reeling sailors; in the 
midst of prostitution, in front of gaudy " gin- 
palaces " — " blazing lighthouses of hell," enticing 
and damning on every side. He paints them all as 
with Hogarth's brush, or the pencil of his old friend, 
Cruikshank. He likens himself, in these peregrina- 
tions among the unsewered classes, to a farm-hand 
who was constantly astonishing the old farmer for 
whom he worked by doing unexpected things, and 
who one day went into the barn and hung himself. 
Looking at the dangling form, the farmer said: 
" What on earth will that fellow do next ? " 

What is English philanthropy doing to better this 
badness ? Much. City missionaries are everywhere 
afoot, devoting themselves chiefly to house-to-house 
visitation. And these are reinforced by street preach- 
ers — a rough and ready, but devoted and effective, 
body of Christian workers, many of them mechanics 
and working men, who give their spare hours to this 
service of humanity, and disclose great shrewdness 
and ingenuity in their methods of approach and 
address. 

Moreover, there are abounding benevolent institu- 
tions and reformatory refuges set down in the midst 
of the greatest need, as centers of physical and moral 
help. And they go about their work in the most 
practical way — giving a clean shirt before speaking 
of a clean heart ; feeding hunger before exhort- 
ing it ; nursing sickness before bidding it prepare 
for death. This is the method of Christ, who incor- 
porated His word of salvation in an act of salva- 
tion, and reached and renewed the heart through 
a renovated body. Mr. Gough was in hearty accord 



THE STREETS OF LONDON. 255 

with such humanitarian ism in religion — believed in 
and practised it. 

As intemperance was the main cause of the 
profligacy and squalor of the London streets, he was 
glad to find that the temperance people were actively 
engaged in the advocacy of their panacea along the 
sidewalks. He met a noble lady, the Honorable 
Maude Stanley, and frequently accompanied her in 
walks of philanthropy. Under her guidance, he 
remarks : 

" I spoke in the vicinity of ' Five Dials ' to an audience of 
four hundred, gathered from the garrets and cellars of the 
neighborhood, and after the address a temperance society was 
formed. It was a motley crowd, presenting vivid contrasts. 
There were the right honorable and the costermonger ; the 
countess and the harlot ; the gentleman and the thief ; the refined 
and the degraded ; the rich and the poor — and the Lord, the 
Maker of them all." l 

The result of that meeting was the opening of a 
" coffee-palace," called the " Stanley Arms," on the 
very spot, with Dean Stanley and other prominent 
persons for its sponsors. Miss Stanley has written 
often and admirably upon her work amcng the lowly, 
and the American found in her a kindred spirit. 

Among the philanthropic agencies in London 
streets, he mentions Hoxton Hall. This had been a 
" music hall " — a vile place, and the ruin of many 
persons of both sexes, — a temple of abominations. In 
1878 it was converted into a Gospel station, similar 
to Jerry McAuley's " Cremorne Mission," in New 
York, which, indeed, suggested the idea. Mr. Gough 



1 " Sunlight and Shadow," p. 160. 



256 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

was profoundly interested in this venture, and spoke 
there repeatedly. One of these addresses, given 
under the auspices of the Blue Ribbon Army (a tem- 
perance organization connected with the hall), is thus 
outlined by the London Times : x 

" On Saturday Mr. Gough, the temperance lecturer, addressed 
an audience at the Hoxton Temperance Music Hall, Hoxton 
street, composed mainly of 'reformed men and wome: 
hall was thronged an hour before the time announced for the 
lecture. The audience was composed, with very few excep- 
tions, of working men and women, and when the Rev. J. John- 
stone, in the prayer prefacing the address, begged for the 
Divine guidance on those who had fled from the temptations of 
drink, a fervid ' Amen ' was murmured from many lips. Sacred 
songs, under the leadership of Mr. Willis - the honorary- 

director of the Gospel temperance movement, were sung very 
heartily by the people, and Mr. Noble then asked all those who 
had signed the pledge in that hall to stand up. Nearly the 
whole of the audience rose, and he proceeded to say that 
among those were many reformed drunkards, as well as re- 
formed men and women who had been moderate drinkers. He 
asked them to repeat their vow, and they, upstanding, solemnly 
said, ■ I promise, by God's help, to abstain from all intoxicating 
liquors, and to discountenance their use in others. The Lord 
help me to keep this vow for Christ's sake. Amen/ Mr. Noble 
went on to say that Mr. Gough had given upwards of thirty 
addresses to the working classes of London without fee or 
reward, and in these the Hoxton people had largely shared. 

" Mr. Gough had told the committee of the Blue Ribbon 
Army, that if they cared to take a large hall and make a charge 
for admission, his address should be in aid of the fund to carry 
on that mission, and if they had done so there would have been 
ten thousand people to hear him ; but the committee had de- 



1 October 6, 1879, 



THE STREETS OF LONDON. 257 

cided to have a meeting whereat the people who had been ben- 
efited by Mr. Gough's labors could assemble to bid him fare- 
well. Mr. James Rae, late of the Royal Artillery, Mr. Morgan, 
and Mr. Robert Rae, the secretary of the National Temperance 
League, then spoke, and acknowledged the services of Mr. 
Gough to the temperance cause. 

"On behalf of the mission, Mr. John Smith, a French-polisher, 
presented Mr. Gough with an album containing portraits of 
those who had firmly enlisted themselves in the Blue Ribbon 
Army. When Mr. Gough stood forward to receive the gift, a 
poor woman pressed to the front, and presented Mrs. Gough 
with a bouquet of autumnal flowers. Mr. Gough, who was re- 
ceived with repeated cheers, said he was unequal to the task of 
making a speech that night, for he was quite exhausted. Touch- 
ing, however, upon the fact of finding devoted gentlemen act- 
ing as door-keepers to that hall, he said he would rather be in 
that position himself than have all the profits of the largest Bur- 
ton ale brewery for fifty years. He would rather have the 
lowest menial position in a work like that of the Blue Ribbon 
Army, than hold the highest position in a work coupled with 
any action which would do harm to a single soul. He pro- 
ceeded to address his audience upon the pledge which they had 
repeated, and after remarking that it was thirty-seven years 
since he had signed a similar pledge, he added that though he 
could not excuse drunkenness, yet it must be allowed that the 
circumstances under which drunkards were made were differ- 
ent. The appetite for drink, once obtained, never wholly for- 
sook men. They must pray to be kept from this appetite." 

Yes, if there was sorrow in the streets of London, 
there was also pity there. If Womanhood walked 
discrowned and attended by demon shadows, Purity 
also trod the pavements with her feet sandaled in 
love. If Manhood hiccoughed and staggered along, 
the angel of Sobriety steadied the bewildered feet and 
guided them in ways of pleasantness and paths of 
17 



258 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

peace. If children were trained to be professionally 
wicked, they were also eagerly sought and taught to 
be divinely good. Where peril lurked, like a bloody 
leaper, ready to kill and craunch, safety was also am- 
bushed to deliver and restore. 

"Why do you not come any more for cold victuals?" 
asked a lady of one of these street Arabs, whom she 
had been in the habit of supplying. 

" 'Cos, ma'am," said he, " dad's signed the pledge, 
and we git hot victuals at home! " 



III. 



A SILVER TROWEL. 



There is no form of human appreciation quite so 
grateful to a prominent man as that which comes 
from the scenes and associates of childhood. A 
man's birthplace is apt to resent a success of which it 
had no premonition, and in which it played no part. 
The estimate it formed in " the day of small things," 
it does not like to find mistaken. 'Tis an impeach- 
ment of the local judgment. It prefers to believe 
the outside world in error. Consequently, when his 
birthplace is won to revise its first opinion and echo 
a fellow townsman's honorable fame, he feels the 
compliment, and gives it a value far beyond its actual 
worth. 

On the 5th of June, 1879, a recognition of this kind 
made John B. Gough very happy. Sandgate in- 
dorsed his standing in the world, and adopted him as 
a kind of patron saint. 

It had long been a desire of his to set in the center 
of his native town a visible monument to temperance. 
This desire ripened into a purpose. The practical 
cast of his mind led him to prefer utility to ornamen- 
tation — both, if possible, but the first anyhow. " I 
have it ! " he cried, " I will build a Coffee Tavern." 



260 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

Friends were consulted. Funds were quietly but 
quickly collected. Mr. Gough, accompanied by a 
throng of temperance co-workers, went down to lay 
the corner-stone, on a date which marked, almost to 
a day, the fiftieth anniversary of his departure to play 
the part of Columbus and discover a name and repu- 
tation in the world. 

Sandgate was in gala-dress. The citizens lined the 
sidewalks along the straggling street. A procession 
composed of the local clergy, the military of the neigh- 
borhood, the temperance societies, and the visitors, 
with the orator in their midst, marched, with banners 
flying and bands playing, toward the site of the new 
hostelry. And now, see ! amid the cheers of the 
throng, the people unharness the horses, and them- 
selves drag the carriage in which the grizzled Sand- 
gate boy sits blushing and embarrassed — making 
a scene quite like the triumphal march of Trajan 
when he came back to Rome leading in the retinue 
of his conquest the races and customs depicted on his 
famous column, and encircling it from base to capital; 
only this is a retinue of peace and good will. 

The center of the village is reached. The orator 
alights and delivers a characteristic address. He is 
in his happiest mood. The people laugh and cry by 
turns. The skies are in sympathy with temperance, 
and baptize the occasion with copious showers of 
cold water. No one cares ; no one moves. He takes 
a silver trowel and with this lays the corner-stone of 
"The Gough Coffee Tavern." The darkness falls. 
The crowds disperse. And " God bless John Gough ! " 
is the slogan of the hour. 

Ever after, among all the trophies of love that dec- 



A SILVER TROWEL. 261 

orate the home at " Hillside/' this silver trowel holds 
first place. Lift it, and read the inscription : 

"PRESENTED TO 

J. B. GO UGH, ESQ., 

ON HIS LAYING THE 

CORNER-STONE 

OF 

COFFEE TAVERN, 

IN 
SANDGATE, KENT, 
JUNE 2D, 1879." 

In looking about his birthplace, Mr. Gough was 
glad to see marks of improvement. As the waters of 
the channel rolled in upon the sands, erasing old im- 
pressions and smoothing them for new ones; so had 
the tides of time washed in and out of Sandgate, 
obliterating something of the past and preparing 
for the present. Certain landmarks were still visible 
— " the street/' the older houses, the castle. But 
since " the days of auld lang syne " the population 
had multiplied three and a half fold, and now num- 
bered 2,400; the outlying villas were more numerous; 
the summer saunterers on the sands looked smarter; 
the morale was higher, and smuggling had faded into 
tradition. 

Not long after the laying of the corner-stone the 
"Gough Coffee Tavern" was completed and thrown 
open, advertising its namesake in a significant man- 
ner, and exemplifying his hospitable spirit towards 
man and beast. 



PART XI. 

The Hoary Head 



" The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be 
found in the way of righteousness.' 

— Prov. xvi. : 31. 



OLD ACTIVITIES IN NEW RELATIONSHIPS. 

The preparation and publication of " Sunlight and 
Shadow," in 1880, signalized Mr. Gough's return to 
Yankeeland, in October, 1879. The book gave recent 
British experiences, supplemented by incidents, anec- 
dotes, and Goughiana, covering the decade since the 
appearance of the revised and enlarged "Autobi- 
ography," in 1871, and was itself richly autobiograph- 
ical, and therefore athrob with vitality. Being 
marked by all the peculiarities of its author, it met 
with quick success. 

There was a continuous demand for printed copies 
of Mr. Gough's lectures. These were extant on both 
sides of the Atlantic, in words snatched from his lips, 
often incorrect (for he was the most impossible of 
speakers to report) and full of absurd mistakes. 
Thirty-six distinct lectures he had revised and al- 
lowed to go out, in England, in a penny edition, one 
lecture in each number, which sold to the extent of 
1,000,000 copies. While in Great Britain three re- 
porters from London followed him from place to 
place. Four metropolitan journals printed his 
speeches in full; many others abbreviated them; and 
the provincial press was equally enterprising. More- 
over, letters from the four quarters of the globe came 



JOHN" B. GOUGH. 

to " Hillside " assuring the orator that the reading of 
these speeches had been the means of leading many 
to reform. 

Influenced by these considerations, and encouraged 
by judicious advisers. Mr. Gough issued " Platform 
Echoes," in 1884, a book composed of temperance 
and miscellaneous records of the platform, and pro- 
fusely illustrated. It makes an interesting and 
worthy memorial. But we regret the form of it. The 
division into chapters is a poor substitute for a divi- 
sion into speeches. The addresses are thus mutilated 
and disguised. Moreover, since Mr. Gougli so con- 
sistently disclaimed authorship, and since he was an 
acknowledged king of the platform, he might more 
wisely have collected his lectures, and given then; I 
the world in an authentic edition. a Platform 
E :hoes," instead of being a book of scrappy chaptr 
ought to have been a volume of connected public 
addresses. However, like its predecessors, it circu- 
lated readily and rapidly — and continues so to do. 

Although never a partisan, the reformer v 
party man. He recognized the truth that in a free 
country, government must be administered by party. 
Since its organization at Philadelphia, in 1856, he had 
acted with the Republican party. Its leaders had 
been his personal friends. Its history he read in the 
grandest achievements of the nineteenth century. In 
later years, however, its course had been marked by 
moral vacillation. From the temperance stand- 
point, the u party of moral ideas" was immoral. It 
had made promises before election to hold Prohibi- 
tion voters, and broken them after election as easily 
and jauntily as dicers break their oaths. Tempera:. 



OLD ACTIVITIES IN NEW RELATIONSHIPS. 267 

men, like Clinton B. Fisk and Governor St. John ; 
moral reformers, like Frances E. Willard and Mary A. 
Livermore, were disgusted out of Republicanism. 

Mr. Gough staid longer ; but at last he, too, 
became a come-outer. Quoting the epigram of 
Wendell Phillips, he said : " The men who made the 
Republican party are in the grave ; the men whom 
the Republican party made are in Congress." And, 
being in Congress, they refused to do anything for 
temperance. The prestige of government w T as per- 
petually with the foes of government, and the affairs 
of society were administered by the outcasts of 
society. Liquor was in office, and temperance was 
out, — and was, therefore, naturally /#/ out. 

In early days, the liquor traffic was not organ- 
ized. The manufacturers and venders were numer- 
ous, but they were not affiliated. Ardent spirits 
were bought and sold side by side with legiti- 
mate foods and drinks over the counter of the grocery 
or in the tavern. In the lapse of time all this has 
changed. The liquor traffic has consolidated itself 
into a vast, centralized oligarchy, as compact and 
insolent as the slave-power used to be. With an 
enormous capital, directly invested in the business ; 
with an even greater wealth, indirectly but conse- 
quentially concerned ; with tens of thousands of 
saloons, each absolutely controlling from eight to ten 
voters ; with appetite and social custom as active 
allies; it dictates to political parties, writes the death- 
warrants of politicians, or secures their promotion, 
according as they serve or oppose its cause, buys up 
or brow T beats legislatures, terrorizes the community 
by assaulting or assassinating unpurchasable or 



268 JOHN B. GOUCH. 

undaunted opponents, and flares a legalized right to 
be in the faces of the husbands and fathers and sons 
it ruins, the wives and mothers and daughters it 
bows in want and mortification and sorrow to the 
earth, the children it pawns to ignorance and 
poverty and vice, and the public it seeks to damn. 

" When bad men combine," remarks Edmund Burke, 
" the good must associate, else they will fall one 
by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible 
struggle/' In obedience to this precept of the great 
master of political philosophy, the friends of temper- 
ance had met in Chicago in 1869 (September 1st), 
and formed a Prohibition party, whose avowed ob- 
ject was the legal destruction of the liquor traffic. 
Like most third parties, it made slow progress. In 
the Presidential election of '72 it threw 5,607 votes 
in six States ; in '76, 9,737, in eighteen States ; 
in '8o, 9,678, in sixteen States ; in '84 (the period 
of which we write), 150,626, in thirty-four States — an 
encouraging gain. 1 

Governor St. John, of Kansas, was the candidate 
of the Prohibition party in '84. He was a man who 
had Mr. Gough's entire confidence, and the veteran 
was more than glad to vote for him. In explanation 
of his course, he wrote: 

" For forty-two years I have been fighting the liquor trade 
— the trade which robbed me of seven of the best years of my 
life. I have long voted the Republican ticket, hoping always 
for help in my contest from the Republican party. But we 
have been expecting something from that party in vain ; and 



1 In 1888 the Prohibition vote was 249,945. In 1892 it was 
270,710. 



OLD ACTIVITIES IN NEW RELATIONSHIPS. 269 

now, when they have treated the most respectful appeal, from 
the most respectable men in the country, with silent contempt, 
I say it is time for us to leave off trusting, and to express our 
opinion of that party." 1 

In the same year, only a few days before the elec- 
tion, he wrote a letter to The Voice, in New York, the 
Prohibition organ, in which he said: 

" I have one vote to be responsible for that has always been 
given to the Republican party from the beginning of its exist- 
ence to this present year. ... I hoped to find in the Re- 
publican party, as a party of high moral ideas, protection 
against the liquor traffic, instead of protection for it, and have 
been unwilling to aid in making this grand cause a football to 
be kicked between political parties. . . . This year, how- 
ever, has seen strange things. Surprising disintegrations have 
been going on in the two old parties. Both have either open 
affiliations with, or a cowardly and shameful servility to, the 
arrogant set of rings and lobbies of this drink trade, w r hich 
lifts its monstrous front of $750,000,000 of money spent directly 
in it, with an equal sum in addition taxed upon the people to 
take care of its miserable results." ' 2 

Such was the choice and action of John B. Gough, 
in 1884. At the same time, in a passage illustrative 
of his catholicity of spirit and feeling as a reformer, 
he wrote: 

"While I stand unflinchingly on the platform of total ab- 
stinence and absolute prohibition, combining their forces for 
the entire abondonment of the drinking customs and the an- 
nihilation of the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, — 
I hold out my hand to every worker as far as he can go with 
me, if it is but a step." 3 



1 '* Cyclopaedia of Temperance," Art. '* Gough," p. 194. 

9 The Voice, October, 1684. 3 " Sunlight and Shadow," p. 482. 



270 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

Through these years, in the midst of these readjust- 
ments, the lecturer who " hailed " from " Hillside," 
but was seldom there, 

" The round of his simple duties walked, 
And strove to live what he always talked." 

Wherever he went, there was a generous rivalry 
among the most charming homes, for the honor of 
his entertainment. In an affecting page of the " Au- 
tobiography " he refers to this fact: 

"Among the results of my public life, most valuable and ap- 
preciated, are the pleasant homes I have found in this country 
and Great Britain ; the association with some of the best and 
noblest ; and the familiar intercourse with so many of the wise 
and good ; — this, next to the fact that I may have been able, 
by God's blessing, to accomplish something toward the 
amelioration of the condition of the poor and degraded, and 
the upbuilding of the cause of the Master — has been to me a 
source of the highest gratification. I could fill page after page 
with the record of kindness received in the homes where I have 
found a welcome. The recollection of them crowds upon 
me." 1 

None of his friends were closer than two whose 
eminence almost equaled his own, — the Rev. 
Dr. Wm. M. Taylor, of New York, and the Rev. Dr. 
Theodore L. Cuyler, of Brooklyn. It was during his 
second British tour that he made Dr. Taylor's ac- 
quaintance, at Liverpool, where he was then settled. 
When Dr. Taylor came to fill the pastorate of the 
Broadway Tabernacle, New York, in 1872, this ac- 
quaintance matured into intimacy. Whenever he 
could do so, Mr. Gough so timed his visits to New 



1 '• Autobiography," p. 549. 



OLD ACTIVITIES IN NEW RELATIONSHIPS. 271 

York as to spend the Sunday there, and listen to this 
prince of preachers. " No man ever opened up the 
Scriptures to me as he did," says the visitor; " when- 
ever I go to the Tabernacle I am helped and com- 
forted." ■ 

Mr. Gough met Dr. Cuyler when the latter was in 
the Theological Seminary at Princeton, away back in 
1844, on the occasion of his first speech at that vener- 
able seat of learning. On both sides, it was a case of 
love at first sight — a love never afterw r ards cooled or 
clouded through evil or through good report. " I 
visited him in his first manse, at Burlington, N. J.," 
writes Mr. Gough; " then many times in Trenton, 
afterwards in New York, when he was at the Market 
Street Church, and since his settlement over the La- 
fayette Street Church, Brooklyn." It was a source of 
regret that the exigencies of his calling forbade the 
lecturer from hearing this preacher often. But as a 
correspondent he got into the heart of his friend. " I 
have read many of Horace Walpole's letters," he says, 
"all of Cowper's that are published, a large propor- 
tion of Charles Lamb's, but, in my opinion, Dr. 
Cuyler's letters, of which I have a large package, are 
superior to them all. If selections from his corre- 
spondence with different individuals for the last 
thirty-five years were published, they would constitute 
one of the most readable of books." 2 

Mr. Gough valued his opportunities on the platform 
and his friendships off of it, chiefly as ways and means 
for waging his moral warfare. As time passed and 



1 " Sunlight and Shadow," p. 417. 

2 " Sunlight and Shadow," p. 419. 



272 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

his youth receded, instead of hating liquor less he 
hated it more. Thought, feeling, observation, in- 
flamed his advocacy. 

s< While I can talk against the drink,'' he exclaimed, 
%% I'll talk; and when I can only whisper, I'll do that; 
and when I can't whisper, I'll make motions. They 
say I'm good at that! " 

Like all earnest men, Mr. Gough found his patience 
severely taxed by palterers. Honest opponents he 
could reason with. Liquor- dealers he knew where to 
find — there was something admirable in their fixed- 
ness. But on the road to the celestial city, " Mr. 
Timid" and u Mr. Expediency," and " Mr. Facing- 
Lo !i-ways," were characters at once common and 
detestable. On this point he would have agreed with 
a recent spicy writer's estimate: 

"The saloon-keeper is 'a man of quality ' — of one quality, 
especially — stay-putness. Wherever you left him, you will find 
him, if you go back. 

" Morally and religiously he varies like other people. Politi- 
cally he is absolutely genuine, admirable. In Iowa or Illinois 
he is the same, the soul of political faithfulness to his dominant 
issue. In a winning race he wears his honors lightly ; in a hope- 
less minority he fairly shines. Tell him ' It is no use,' ' You 
will throw your vote away,' ' Stick to educational methods,' and 
such irrefragable reasoning — to Christian men — and he will 
'smile, and smile, and be a villain still.' He has an idea and 
believes in it. He can neither be flattered, ' fixed,' frightened, 
nor fooled. 

** He not only stands for ' personal liberty ' ; he is ready to 
fall with it. The American eagle, winged, beaked, taloned, 
and roosting on a streak of lightning, is an ordinary barn-fowl 
as an emblem of liberty compared to him, alert, aproned, with 
the law's lightning in his license skewered to his wall, the 



OLD ACTIVITIES IN NEW RELATIONSHIPS. 273 

national colors under his feet, and his head towering amidst 
clouds of public sentiment colossally innocuous to him — serene 
as Jupiter he is ' there,' like the distilleries round about 
Peoria ; and he wins, not only the election — that could be borne 
— but he wins by the votes of men that abhor him. For in con- 
trast that would be very funny if it were less mysterious and 
humiliating is the average man of what is called the 'better 
class ' politically. With him principles are things of topography ; 
convictions are held with a certain sense of proportion, and 
relative to the world, the flesh, and the party. He is Prohibi- 
tionist in Kansas, prchibitionish in Massachusetts, prohibition- 
oid in South Carolina, a ' sentiment-maker ' in Auburndale, a 
sentimental fakir in Boston. Yet, if you should meet him in 
Kansas, he would say that he was a Prohibitionist, not because 
it was Kansas, but because he was he. He will tell you that 
he wore out his chaise hauling Prohibition voters in Sioux City, 
but is now filling the pulpit of St. Demijohn, in Omaha, and 
suits ; that he stumped Iowa for the amendment, and has not 
changed his mind, but would not read a notice of a 
W. C. T. U. meeting in his present charge. Call on him in 
Omaha, and he will tell you that he is in favor of the best law 
that the average local sentiment will approve ; by which proc- 
ess of reasoning he would be, if he lived in Sheol, a contented 
devil. He believes in ' final perseverance ' of the liquor traffic, 
and in justification by bargain and sale at the best obtainable 
figure." 1 



1 John G. Woolley, " The Golden Rule," August 10th, 1893, P» 
921. 



18 



II. 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEMPERANCE. 

As a veteran of temperance, whose life synchro- 
nized with its organization into a social and political 
movement, Mr. Gough's philosophy of the cause 
deserves careful study. He was not a scholar, in 
the academic sense, but he was a close and accurate 
observer. And he knew his own limitations. If he 
was unable to discuss certain phases of the subject at 
first hand, he knew just where to go for the required 
information, so that he could speak with authority 
at second hand. Thus, either through personal expe- 
rience, or because of access to supreme authorities, he 
was master of the encyclopaedia of the reform he 
advocated. 

Mr. Gough contended that alcohol is an alien prin- 
ciple, not included in the scheme of life. One-fourth 
of life, and that the most exposed portion, viz., 
infancy and childhood, is spent without any use of it 
— as the remaining stages are by most Orientals, and 
by ever-enlarging numbers of abstainers in Europe 
and America, to their immense physical and moral 
gain. 

He quotes the celebrated B. W. Richardson, M.D., 
on the physiology of alcohol, to show that it is not a 
natural food: 

" If you ask science for a comparison of alcohol and of man, 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEMPERANCE. 275 

in respect to the structure of both, her evidence is as the sun at 
noon in its clearness. She has taken the body of man to pieces; 
she has learned the composition of its structure — skin, muscle, 
bone, viscera, brain, nervous cord, organs of sense. She 
knows of what these parts are formed, and she knows whence 
the components came. She finds in the muscles fibrine ; it 
came from the fibrine of flesh, or from the gluten or albumen 
of the plants on which the man has fed. She finds tendon and 
cartilage and earthy matter of the skeleton ; they were from the 
vegetable kingdom, she finds water in the body in such 
abundance that it makes up seven parts out of eight of the 
whole ; and that she knows the source of readily enough. She 
finds iron ; that she traces from the earth. She finds fat ; and 
that she traces to sugar and starch. In short, she discovers, 
in whatever structure she searches, the origin of the structure. 
But, as a natural presence, she finds no ardent spirit there in 
any part or fluid. Nothing made from spirit. Did she find 
either, she would say the body is diseased, and, it may be, was 
killed by that which is found. 

" Sometimes in the bodies of men she discovers the evidences 
of some conditions that are not natural. She compares these 
bodies with the bodies of other men, or with the bodies of in- 
ferior animals, as sheep and oxen, and finds that the unnatural 
appearances are peculiar to persons who have taken alcohol, 
and are indications of new structural changes which are not 
proper, and which she calls disease. Thus, by two tests, science 
tries the comparison between alcohol and man. She finds in 
the body no structure made from alcohol ; she finds in the 
healthy body no alcohol ; she finds in those who have taken 
alcohol changes of the structure, and those are changes of 
disease. By all these proofs she declares alcohol to be entirely 
alien to the structure of man. It does not build up the body; 
it undermines and destroys the building. 

" One step more. If you question science on the comparison 
which exists between foods and alcohol, she gives you facts on 
every hand. She shows you a natural and all-sufficient and 
standard food. She calls it milk. She takes it to pieces ; she 



276 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

says it is made up of casein, for the construction of muscular 
and other active tissues; of sugar and fat, for supplying fuel to 
the body for the animal warmth ; of salts for the earthy, and 
of water for the liquid parts. This is a perfect standard. 
Holds it any comparison with alcohol ? Not a jot. The com- 
parison is the same with all other natural foods." 

Wilson's " Pathology of Drunkenness," is referred 
to as " a most vivid and fearful revelation of the 
progress from conviviality to casual and habitual 
intoxication, and the constitutional and mental results. 
Wilson traces the disturbance of the circulation, the 
disorder of the functions of digestion, the disease of 
the liver, of the kidneys, of the lungs, the tubercular 
degeneration, the brain disease, the apoplexy, which 
are some of the constitutional results : while loss or 
confusion of memory, mental aberration, delirium, 
lunacy, and suicide are some of the mental results. 
The springs of life are tainted at their source, 
and their currents diffusing themselves everywhere 
throughout the system, the one as the basis of 
vitality, the other as the origin of its leading 
phenomena, have the traces of their altered qualities 
everywhere apparent.'' ' 

With reference to the alcoholic stages, he further 
quotes Dr. Richardson : 

"A man or woman sitting down or standing up 
to drink wine, or other stimulant, always starts on 
the way that leads through four stages towards an 
easily realizable destination : Stage one, is that gentle 
stimulation called moderate excitement, or ■ support.' 
Stage two is elevation — whatever that may mean. It 



1 " Sunlight and Shadow," p. 447. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEMPERANCE. 277 

is not elevation of character, of that I am satisfied. 
Stage three is confusion of mind, action, and deed, 
with sad want of elevation. Stage four is complete- 
concatenation of circumstances — all the stages per- 
fectly matured, the journey completed, the traveler 
lying down, absolutely prostrated in mind and in 
body. The destination is reached, and is found to be 
a human being dead drunk/' 

In this connection, he relates an Arabian fable of 
the vine : 

" The devil matured the vine with the blood of four animals : 
First, with that of the peacock ; and when the vine began to 
put forth leaves, with the blood of the ape ; when the grapes 
began to appear, with the blood of a lion ; and, lastly, when 
they were quite ripe, with the blood of a hog : which is the 
reason, the Arab says, that the wine-bibber at first struts 
about like a peacock, then begins to dance or sing, and make 
grimaces like an ape, then rages like a lion, and finally lies down 
in a ditch, like a hog." l 

It is while in the third stage of drunkenness, the 
stage in which Dr. Richardson in the above extract 
asserts that the victim is " confused in mind, action, 
and deed," or the "lion state," according to the Ara- 
bian fable, — that the drunkard is usually moved to be- 
come a criminal. "I have read somewhere," says Mr. 
Gough,"an old legend, in which a man was offered his 
choice of three voluntary acts: to murder his father, 
burn down his house, or get drunk. Laughingly, he 
chose the latter as the least objectionable of the three. 
He got drunk. While in that state he became furious. 
Enraged at his father's attempt to control him, he 



Sunlight and Shadow," p. 474. 



278 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

struck him a blow with a hammer which lay near, and 
killed him; then, filled with horror at the deed he set 
fire to the house, hoping to destroy the body and 
hide his crime." ■ 

The apostle of temperance maintained that know- 
ingly and willing to drink what will thus paralyze 
the reason and inflame the passions, is sinful: 

" I believe that when a man knows that the use of intoxica- 
ting liquors is detrimental to his health, injurious to him in 
body and mind, hinders his useful labor, and will solely for his 
sensuous gratification use it, then he commits sin. . . . 

" Drunkenness is a sin unlike others, in that it carries its pen- 
alty with it in the suffering and enslavement of its victim. It 
is but the penalty for violated law ; the sin is not in the penalty, 
but in the violation of law. Now, is there no wrong in drink- 
ing, unless it produces what we call drunkenness or intoxica- 
tion ? If you mean by drunkenness a persistent use of alcoholic 
beverages, knowing all the consequences, then it is always and 
ever sin against the body, the mind, the soul, and society, and 
a grievous sin against God. But is there no sin in the intoxi- 
cation that consists in mere exhilaration, elevation, or excite- 
ment ; or even the slight confusion of thought, without stagger- 
ing or stammering? If the brain is disturbed in its action and 
the power of the will weakened, or if the self-control is affected, 
the perception stimulated while its accuracy is destroyed : if the 
judgment is perverted, if the drinker will go where he would 
not go without it, say what he would not say without it, think 
as he would not think, and do as he would not do without it; 
though his utterance may not be thick, his eye may be clear, 
his gait steady, and no outward appearance giving evidence — 
is he not in some degree tipsy, inebriated, drunk ? 

" Can a man steal a little, lie a little, swear a little, and be 
innocent ? Are there any degrees by which you may measure 



Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 448,449. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEMPERANCE. 279 

the enormity or the veniality of these practices ? I would fasten 
the sin on the cause, not on the effect, be it greater or less." 1 

In answering the assertion that wine has been the 
concomitant and promoter of civilization, the lecturer 
quotes an eminent writer as saying: 

" It is said that the use of wine and its allies has been the 
source of the power of the most powerful nations. It is said 
that the wine-cup has been the fountain of that wit and poetry 
and artistic wisdom, if I may use the term, which has made 
the illustrious men of the world so illustrious and so generally 
useful as they have been to the world. Take away the wine- 
cup, it is argued, and the whole intellectual life must needs 
become ' flat, stale, and unprofitable.' It were indeed a pity if 
this were the lookout of total abstinence, a second deluge of 
water, with not so much as a graceful dove and an olive- 
branch to cheer the trackless waste. It were indeed a pity 
of pities if this were the final lookout of total abstinence in the 
intellectual sphere. Can it be that all intellectual energy and 
hilarity must die out with the abolition of the wine-cup ? . . . 
" Science, ever fair, says that some nations and wonderful 
peoples that have lived have been wine-drinkers at certain 
periods of their history. But she draws also this most import- 
ant historical lesson, that the great nations were, as a rule, 
water-drinkers purely, until they became great ; then they took 
to wine and other luxuries, and soon became little. Up to the 
time of Cyrus, the Persians were water-drinkers ; they became 
all-powerful, and then also became such confirmed wine-drink- 
ers that, if they had some great duty to perform, they discussed 
the details of it when inflamed with wine, and rejected the 
judgment or revised it when they had become sober, and vice 
versa. Surely this was the acme of perfection as a test of wine. 
Curiously, it didn't answer. With its luxury Persia succumbed, 
fell into hands of less luxurious conquerors, and, like a modern 
rake, found its ' progress ' anything but progressive in the end. 



1 " Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 449-450. 



280 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

" The Greeks in their first and simple days were clothed in 
victory over men and over nature. They grew powerful ; they 
sang and danced, and all but worshiped wine ; but it did not 
sustain them in their grandeur, as it ought to have done if the 
theory of such sustainment be correct. The Roman rule 
became overwhelming out of the simplicity of its first life. It 
rose into luxury, and made wine almost a god. But Rome fell. 
Wine did not sustain it. It is all through history the same. 
There is not an instance, when we come to the analysis of fact 
and circumstance, in which wine has not been to nations, as to 
man individually, a mocker. It has been the death of nations. 
It has swept down nations, as it sweeps down men, in the prime 
of their life, and in the midst of their glory." 

So much for the evil of intemperance, and the na- 
ture of it, as it lay in the perception and philosophy 
of Mr. Gough. 

Let us turn, now, to his scheme of reform. 

He pleaded first and last and all the time for total 
abstinence, as " a certain, effectual cure. It never 
fails, it cannot fail. It stops the supplies, and the 
evil must cease; it dries up the spring, and there can 
be no stream. Prevention is better than cure. It is 
worth a life-effort to save a drunkard, to lift a man 
from degradation, but to prevent his fall is far better." * 

As it concerns a reformed man, total abstinence he 
esteemed the only possible course. His own experi- 
ence, and the experience of tens of thousands of 
others, spoke on this point in trumpet tones. The 
appetite for liquor is created by indulgence. This is 
a physiological effect which remains after reform. 
When the desire is gone, appetite lies couchant — like 
the pet tiger that licks its master's hand till blood is 



1 " Sunlight and Shadow," Chap, xxxii, passim. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEMPERANCE. 281 

tasted — then hold him who can! One glass will rouse 
this appetite, and unmake the new-made. The only 
safety for the reformed drunkard is total abstinence. 
In pleading with the moderate drinker, Mr. Gough 
says: 

" I appeal to him on a higher ground than mere self-preserva- 
tion. I ask him to abstain for the sake of others. . . .In 
view ot the terrible nature of this evil, and of the fact that the 
drunkards are all drawn from the ranks of moderation; that, 
when death makes gaps in their ranks, they are filled by recruits 
from the army of moderate drinkers, — we must speak out, and 
implore the moderate drinker to give up his gratification for the 
sake of others. I do not accuse such an one of willfully doing 
harm. I ask him to investigate, and to test his position." l 

Mr. Gough sought to reinforce total abstinence by 
basing it upon religious principle. He knew men 
could abstain who had never drank, that men could 
abstain who had been moderate drinkers, and that 
men could abstain who had been drunkards, by an 
act of the will. But he was convinced that such ab- 
stainers, whichever of these classes they belonged to, 
were in chronic peril. He believed the grace of God 
to be more reliable than the grace of the wilL Per- 
sonally, when he first signed the pledge, he kept it by 
the grace of the will, five months, — then broke it. 
When he re-signed it, under the grace of God, he never 
broke it. Temperance he regarded as a Christian 
virtue — one of many; and he put it, where Peter did, 
between manliness and knowledge; and where Paul 
did, between righteousness and judgment to come. 
The development of an harmonious Christian charac- 



1 " Sunlight and Shadows/' pp. 476-477. 



252 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

ter would embrace and fortify temperance. Hence 
his desire to bring the pledge under the grace of God. 
" I tell men," he says, " to abstain by the power of 
their will; but every day they abstain in their own 
strength, in the midst of temptation, they do it at a 
risk. When they put forth all their energies, and 
then trust in God's grace, they are safe." 1 

He did not believe that the grace of God takes away 
the appetite for liquor in the case of a reformed man. 
On this point he remarks : 

" Does any one believe that the inflamed state of the stomach, 
as shown in Sewall's plates, — the congestion, the complete 
disorder of the whole nervous system — and all the irritation 
that causes the desire, can be removed with no inconvenience 
and no effort ; and that the whole constitution can be as free 
as when the first glass was taken ? I do not believe it, except 
by a miracle. . . . Remember when Paul prayed that the 
thorn in his flesh might be removed, the answer was, ' My 
grace shall be sufficient for thee ' — though the thorn was not 
removed ; and remember, also, that God will not permit any 
who trust in Him to be confounded or put to shame." 2 

Mr. Gough strongly condemned the use of alcoholic 
wine at the communion table, as unsafe for those who 
had come into the Church through the door of reform, 
and urged the adoption of the unfermented juice of 
the grape — now largely, we wish we could say gener- 
ally, used at the Lord's Supper : 

"When I first began a Christian life I partook of the 
the Communion when intoxicating wine was used. I once told 
the minister that the church smelt like a grog-shop after the 



1 " Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 459, 460. 

2 M Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 464, 465. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEMPERANCE. 283 

ordinance, and that the odor of alcohol was on every com- 
municant's breath. . . . What was its effect on me ? The 
small draught warmed my stomach. It brought back vividly 
the old sensations, though it did not mount to my head and 
affect my brain; yet it was a reminder of the old, bad times, 
and called up associations connected with the use of this very 
article in another way than as a religious ordinance. . . . 
I was startled by the pleasant sensations produced by the 
alcohol even in that small quantity. I could not help that if I 
took it, and I determined to use it no more." l 

Touching the warrant for drinking which some men 
pretend to discover in the Bible, and the long con- 
troversy over tirosh, yayin> oinos y gleukos, and other 
terms, he says : 

" There has been much discussion — many volumes written, 
some strong feelings expressed, and, I think, bitterness engen- 
dered — over the wines of Scripture. I pay very little attention 
to this agitation, as the subject is of no particular moment to 
me. I am not learned, and know nothing of Hebrew or Greek ; 
and if learned men say that the Bible sanctions the use of alco- 
holic wine, that the Saviour made and drank intoxicating wine, 
I can only reply that I do not believe it. But there is no 
necessity for argument with me, as I do not understand the 
question, and it is perfectly immaterial to me what wine the 
Saviour made and drank, as it is what clothes He wore, or 
what food He ate ; for I am no more bound to drink what He 
drank than I am to eat what He ate, or to wear the kind of 
clothing in which He was appareled." 2 

Furthermore, he adds : 

" I do not go to the Bible for a command, ■ Thou shalt ab- 
stain from intoxicating liquors.' I do not seek for a command 



"Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 462-463. 
" Sunlight and Shadow," p. 484. 



284 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

in the Bible to abstain from gambling, horse-racing, prize- 
fighting, dog-fighting, cock-fighting, and all that sort of thing. 
As a Christian man I abstain from these things, believing them 
to be detrimental to the best interest of society ; and because 
I am a Christian it is not only lawful for me to do so, but a 
bounden duty. . . . With my views of Christianity and its 
claims upon me, by my allegiance to God, by my faith in 
Christ, by the vows I took upon myself in His presence and be- 
fore His people, I am bound to give up a lawful indulgence, if, 
by so doing, my example will save a weaker brother from fall- 
ing into sin. That is my position ; can you take that away 
from me ? I will hold it, and take my stand upon it in the day 
of judgment." ! 

Out of his wide experience in meeting objections 
of all kinds, he gives several instances of amusing 
exegesis : 

" I was told of a Cameronian in Scotland who declared he 
had a command to drink spirits, ' for,' said he, ' are we not told 
to try the spirits ? ' And so he would sample every whiskey- 
bottle that was presented to him, quoting Scripture at the 
same time. I heard a man defend gambling from the passage, 
■ The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is 
of the Lord.' It is told of another that he refused to believe 
the Bible because it was opposed to personal cleanliness; and 
when asked for evidence, he quoted the passage, ' He that is 
filthy, let him be filthy still.' " 2 

Mr. Gough brought prohibitory law to the aid of 
total abstinence and religious conviction. This was 
the third essential principle in his conception of the 
trinity of temperance. It was the objective point of 
his agitation. 



1 " Platform Echoes," pp. 257-258. 
8 M Sunlight and Shadow," p. 488. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEMPERANCE. 285 

The right to prohibit seemed to him as clear as 
sunshine. The public safety is the highest law. 
Whatever menaces that, may and should be prohibited. 
All Governments act upon this principle. France and 
Germany prohibited the importation of American 
pork — why ? To protect the stomachs of their people 
against trichinae The United States suspended im- 
migration in 1892. On what ground? Because there 
was cholera in Europe and Asia, and immigration 
threatened infection. 

By the right of eminent domain, the sovereign 
power seizes private property, appraises it, and ap- 
propriates it to public use. 

By parity of reasoning prohibition is avouched. If 
the State adjudges the manufacture and sale of 
liquors as a beverage to be inimical to the welfare of 
the community, its right to prohibit is self-evident — 
like the truths Jefferson catalogues in the commence- 
ment of the Declaration of Independence. 

But in a free community, while the abstract right 
is beyond successful question, the power to exercise 
it is dependent upon public opinion. Any law, how- 
ever wholesome, which has not a friendly public 
opinion to operate it is worse than no law — is a dead 
letter, and tends to bring all other laws into contempt. 
In the present state of the popular conscience, a pro- 
hibitory law could not be enforced in America. 
" Grand juries would not indict; district attorneys 
would not prosecute ; petit juries would not convict ; 
judges would not sentence ; and governors would 
pardon." 

Mr. Gough, with characteristic good sense, rejoiced 
that there was not now a prohibitory clause in the 



286 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

Constitution of the United States. At the same time, 
he worked early and late to secure such an amend- 
ment ! Why ? Because he knew that the agita- 
tion necessary in order to carry the measure would 
be a " campaign of education." It would be impossi- 
ble to win a constitutional prohibitory amendment, 
without first enlightening public opinion and vitaliz- 
ing the conscience of the community. With this 
done, a national law prohibiting the liquor traffic 
would be as easily enforced as is the national law 
against slavery or against polygamy. " I believe," 
said Mr. Gough, " that a prohibitory law based on the 
public sentiment of antagonism to drink, will be suc- 
cessfully enforced ; and just in proportion as it is 
upheld by a spasmodic effort, without sufficient senti- 
ment to back it, it will be a failure, and in my opinion 
worse than nothing." ■ 

Thus believing, he devoted himself to the manufac- 
ture of public opinion, and made himself a doctor of 
the public conscience. " I cry out for assistance 
from every quarter," he said. "Small help is better 
than no help, and I will not refuse any aid given 
from any source to pull down the stronghold of in- 
temperance." 2 

Toward those agents and agencies that were 
directly cooperative with him in his purpose, the tem- 
perance apostle turned with loving heart and smiling 
face. "The National Temperance Society and Pub- 
lication House," in New York, " The Voice," " The 
Good Templars," " The Sons of Temperance," " The 



1 " Sunlight and Shadow," p. 481. 

2 ?' Sunlight and Shadow," p. 482. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEMPERANCE. 287 

Templars of Honor," and all similar associations, he 
encouraged in their efforts to circulate the literature 
of cold water, to educate the public mind, and to 
secure legislative enactments against the drink. 

Above all, he welcomed and valued and cheered 
the presence and counsel and labor of women in the 
good cause. Referring to the formation of the 
"Woman's Christian Temperance Union," in 1874, as 
the outgrowth of the women's crusade against liquor 
in certain Western States — " a most wonderful move- 
ment, which roused the whole people to a consider- 
ation of the evils of drunkenness, creating an interest 
such as this country has not seen since the days of 
Washingtonianism " — he did not hesitate to say that 
he considered this " the most efficient organization 
in the United States to-day." ■ 

Mr. Gough thought well of " Refuges " and 
" Homes," where a reformed man finds shelter and 
sympathy during his first few days of conflict with 
appetite — " where appeals are made to his conscience, 
representing his drunkenness not as a mere peccadillo, 
but as a sin against his body and soul, and as a sin 
against God." 2 He also approved of the coffee- 
palace movement in England, and of such coffee- 
houses as the " Model " and the " Central " in Phila- 
delphia. But for many so-called temperance hotels 
and restaurants he had a profound contempt — places, 
he affims, " where they charge as much for dirt and 
discomfort as you are required to pay in any other 
place for cleanliness and comfort." He adds : 

"I once went into one of these, decoyed by the signboard, 



1 "Sunlight and Shadow," p. 495. 2 "Sunlight and Shadow," p. 503. 



288 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

and sat down at a table where the cloth looked like a map of the 
United States, stained with mustard, coffee, and grease, and with 
crumbs scattered all over it ; the place reminding you of Cole- 
ridge's description of Cologne, in which he counted seventy- 
five distinct smells. I called for a steak, and can hardly de- 
scribe the sights that met my eyes while that steak was in 
preparation. First the bread was put on the table — not a very 
attractive loaf; then some butter that had been cut with a dirty 
knife. The steak, how can that be described ! It reminded 
you of the man who refused to partake of a similar steak on 
the ground that it was an infringement of Goodyear's patent 
for india-rubber. I asked for a cup of tea. It came, remind- 
ing you again of the customer who said, ' If this is tea, I want 
coffee; if it is coffee, I want tea.' In the sugar a wet spoon 
had been so often dipped that it had caked into little drops of 
discolored sweetness. The spoon itself was sticky ; and the 
whole affair was so utterly destructive to all healthy appetite, 
that I left as hungry as I entered." ' 

Mr. Gough, like all men with clear brains, healthy 
livers, and knowledge of the facts, was an optimist. 
While facing and fighting existing evils, he saw and 
rejoiced in the law of progress, and sang, with 
Tennyson : 

" Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose 
runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of 
the suns." 

He mentions the surprising improvements in loco- 
motion (a topic on which he was au fait), in commu- 
nication, in personal comfort, brought about by steam, 
electricity, sewing-machines, chloroform, photogra- 
phy, and a multitude of strange and curious inven- 



" Sunlight and Shadow," p. 504. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEMPERANCE. 289 

tions, which have done more for human advancement 
in the last few decades than had been done in all the 
previous lifetime of our race ; and remarks : 

" As I contemplate the past, how much there is to fill the 
thought and stir the pulses in view of the wonderful progress 
in all directions, and the great changes that have taken place 
since my remembrance, and even since my first entry on public 
life. 

"In 1842, Louis Philippe was King of the French. In 1848 
came the Republic, growing into the Empire. Again, in 1871, 
after the Commune, came the Republic, routing the Empire. 
Four great wars have agitated Europe : the Crimean, the 
Italian, the Franco-German, and the war of Russia with 
Turkey. In 1857 the great East Indian mutiny startled the 
world. In 1847 occurred the war of the United States with 
Mexico, and in 1861 commenced the war for the Union. 

" What great reforms have been inaugurated in the past forty 
years ! In nearly all the civilized portions of the globe, from 
Japan to Christianized Madagascar, from India to our own free 
country, the battle is going on, and the fight becomes more 
earnest. Glance rapidly over the world and see. The United 
States has given freedom to' her slaves; Russia has emanci- 
pated her millions of serfs. Germany is fighting the double 
battle in sight of the world, with a keen, relentless, moral des- 
potism on the one hand, and on the other the struggle between 
the license of materialism and the freedom that walks in stead- 
fast obedience to Divine law. Italy, instead of being a nest 
of petty States, united only in dense ignorance and abject 
slavery, now walks among the nations, free to drain her 
stagnant moral marshes ; free to say to all her people, ■ Rise, 
for thy light has come/ France has made leap after leap 
for civil and political freedom and equal rights : and though 
not yet landed on the safe side, still her dissatisfactions 
are noble, and inspire the world With sympathy toward her 
struggles. England is bravely grappling with internal prob- 
lems, and burden after burden is being lifted from the shouldeis 
J 9 



29O JOHN B. GOUGH. 

of her people. Turkey is being pierced with loopholes for 
light. Egypt tolerates Christian schools. Spain has seen the 
Inquisition crumble. China's Emperor is moving to prevent 
opium from paralyzing his millions of subjects. Japan asks of 
the United States teachers of schools after the method of to- 
day, and takes the Christian Sabbath for her Sabbath; — all this 
when her ports, with one exception, were barred against the 
commerce of the world at the opening of this century. Hear 
the proclamation of the Queen of Madagascar,where till recently 
heathenism reigned supreme, with savage cruelties and perse- 
cutions to the death of all who dared avow the Christian name : 
"' I, Ranovalomajaka, by the grace of God, and the will of 
my people, Queen of Madagascar, defender of the laws of my 
kingdom, this is what I say to you, my subjects: God has given 
me this land and kingdom; and concerning the rum, you and I 
have agreed it shall not be sold, because it does harm to your 
persons, to your wives, and children ; makes foolish the wise, 
makes more foolish the foolish, and causes people not to fear 
the laws of the kingdom, and especially makes them guilty 
before God.' " l 

Such was John B. Gough's philosophy of temper- 
ance. Those who have been wont to regard him as 
a mere minstrel of the cause, telling stories of re- 
form, as the troubadours in the Middle Ages sang of 
love and war from castle gate to castle gate, with no 
grasp of information, nor any power of origination — 
have been wofully mistaken in their estimate of the 
man. This survey of his views should suffice, in it- 
self, to indicate and vindicate the depth of his pene- 
tration, the reach of his knowledge, the kindliness of 
his charity, and the weight of his brain. We ques- 
tion whether any other man of his generation was as 



1 '• Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 512-513. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEMPERANCE. 291 

thoroughly master of the encyclopaedia of temperance 
as John B. Gough. Certainly, none other could equal 
him in the ability to handle the subject before the 
people. Here, by common consent, like Burns's 
"Pink o' Womanhood," he 

"... blooms without a peer." 



III. 



BEGGARS, BORROWERS, AND BORES. 

Mr.Gough devotes three amusing chapters of "Sun- 
light and Shadow " 1 to the beggars, borrowers, and 
bores with whom he had enjoyed (?) a long and expen- 
sive acquaintance. All men in public life have similar 
experiences. Those whose lives are more retired may- 
get from the recital a new reason to be grateful for 
privacy. Hence, we extract from the lecturer's big 
budget a few specimen cases. They serve to " point 
a moral," if they fail to " adorn a tale " : 

" When in England, twenty-five years ago, I boasted that 
I knew nothing in America of the system of writing beg- 
ging letters, so prominent there ; but I really think we can now 
fairly challenge competition in that line with any country in 
the world. I rather think it is an imported nuisance and 
not indigenous to the soil of America. . . . Every mail 
brings me such letters. One says : 

" ' Having heard that you were a very benevolent man, and 
knowing you were not a poor man, for I saw it stated in the 
paper the other day the amount of your income, I make bold to 
ask you a favor. My folks are respectable though not very 
well off, and I wish to go to a music-school for three years. 
My father has a rich uncle, whom I wrote to help me, but he 



1 XXL, XXII., XXIII., pp. 304-40. Vide his " Autobiography, 
pp. 531-534, for further instances. 



BEGGARS, BORROWERS, AND BORES. 293 

thought himself too poor. The cost will be $500 a year. I wish 
you would send me a check for $500 for three years, or a check 
at once for $1,500. Pardon my boldness, but I do so much 
wish to go, etc., etc. 

V ' P. S. — A check payable to bearer.' 

"Another : 

" ' You talk of serving the Lord. You will serve Him by 
helping me. I want $1,000 to get a home.' 

"Another : 

" ' I asked the Lord where I should get $100, and He whis- 
pered your name. Now if you go to the Lord, perhaps He'll 
tell you to send it to me.' 

"Another : 

"'If you only knew how happy $100 would make me, you 
would send it, for you are abundantly able.' 

" Again : 

"' I want $1,000 to educate two nieces, and I write to you.' 

" The most annoying class among the so-called respectable 
beggars are those who. apply to you personally, and by appeals 
to your sympathy obtain money they never mean to repay. 

" A young American in England begged me to lend him ^10 
for a passage home. He could be sent home by steerage, but 
he could not endure a steerage passage ; spoke of his relatives, 
and said, ' I can give you an order on my mother.' The money 
was lent and two pounds additional for some comforts for the 
voyage. The order on his mother was given. I have it now. 
When the gentleman reached this country he had the coolness 
to write me not to present the order to his mother, as it would 
be of no use, for she had no money — and that is the last of that 
transaction. . . . These people, many of them, never 
intend to repay. I write as a sufferer; for from 1845, when 
they began on me, till now, the game has been going on — a 
losing one to me, for I have notes and promises to pay to an 
amount that would hardly be believed of one in my circum- 
stances. All I can say is, that the amount might be put down in 



294 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

five figures, with the figure five at the head of the sum. Over and 
over again have I declared that I will lend no more money to 
persons unknown to me, but they make such fair promises that 
I think, ' This must be a real case '; and like Mr. Hartop, ' I 
am taken in.' " 

He goes on: 

"A very curious plan adopted by some of these professionals 
is to take advantage of the credulity of their intended victims. 
I give portions of a letter received, purporting to come from 
my mother, who has been dead forty years. 

Poor, dead woman ! she has forgotten how to spell, for she 
writes that this letter is to be attended to ' immegertely ': 

" ' John, I, your mother, can speak to you through a medium 
in Bath, Maine.' (She seems to have learned something of 
geography ; for when she was a denizen of this earth, I doubt 
if she knew there was such a place as the above.) ' You and 
this medium are strangers ; but if you will come to her, my 
dear boy, I can convince you that I still live to enjoy my son's 
prosperity.' (No necessity to go to Maine to know that the 
dear mother lives.) ' Do not think or believe your mother does 
not help you and bear you up,' etc., etc. 'John, my son, fear 
not ; God' has given you great gifts, and He has given great 
gifts to the one I am controlling to-day. I wish you would 
help her to come out of her poor condition she is in. If you 
knew what a gem she is. I know you would help her. Come 
and see me. I, your mother, send this. Come and talk to 
me through this medium. If you feel disposed to help her, do. 
From your mother to John.' " 

One of his mails brought the following request 
from an aspirant*: 

" Being in need of a moddle lecture, I send to you for assist- 
ance. My request is that you will please compose a moddle 
lecture from the extracts of your old lectures and give it a sub- 
ject — a lecture that will take about an hour to repeat. I have 
heard of no man that can tie a lecture together with choice 
anecdotes such as you can, and indeed, sir, eloquence has dis- 
tilled her choicest nectar upon your lips. I have spoken 
several times on temperance," etc., etc. 



BEGGARS, BORROWERS, AND BORES. 295 

Always willing to accommodate, Mr. Gough gives 
the following hints for a " Moddle" lecture, to aid 
any who may be fired with ambition: 

" Your subject might be ' Reminders.' You can introduce it 
by stating briefly or at length, according to the time you have, 
that for a conversation it is necessary to start a theme, and 
then all is easy. Describe a company of people sitting dull 
and silent, with nothing to say ; no subject to interest them. 
How shall they engage in a stirring game of conversation ? 
Let some one tell a story, no matter what it is, and it will be 
sure to remind some one of the company of something else. 
There you are — ' that reminds me' of a man who had but one 
story, and that was about a gun. He would impatiently watch, 
when in company, for a chance to repeat his story. When all 
was still, he would let fall a book, or stamp with his feet, then 
start and say: ' Oh, dear, how it startled me ! It reminded me 
of a gun. Talking of guns, * reminds me,' — and then came the 
story. 

" This story of a gun reminds me of a famous hunter who 
had shot tigers in Africa. Conversing with a German about 
sport, he said, ' I care nothing for sport unless there is an ele- 
ment of danger in it.' The German replies, ' Ah ! you vant 
danger ? Veil, you go shoot mit me, dere vill be de danger. 
Vy, I shoot my brother in his stomich, toder day !' Talking 
of shooting reminds me of the man who had a heavy 
charge in his gun, and taking aim at a squirrel, fired. Over 
went he, and the squirrel ran twittering up the tree. 
- Oh ! ' said he, as he picked himself up, ■ if you 
had been at this end of the gun, you would not 
have run so fast.' That reminds me of two negroes, 
who were out shooting, and coming to a wolf's hole, 
one said, ' Dar's a wolf's hole.' ■ I reckon dar is,' said Jem. 
' I wonder wedder de ole un's in dat hole/ ' Dar ain't no wolf 
in dat hole, it don't look like dar was a wolf dar. I reckon 
dar's young uns.' * Reckon dar may be young uns : s'pose 



296 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

you go in dar, Cuff, and see wedder dar is or not.' ■ Go in 
yourself, Jem. I'll stand at de hole and watch for de wolf. If 
I see him coming, I'll let you know.' ' All right'; and Jem 
crept into the hole. Soon the wolf came up with a swinging 
trot, and made straight for the hole. Cuff was too late, and 
could only seize the wolf's tail, and then it was, pull wolf and 
pull Cuff, the wolf's body completely filling the hole. Jem said, 
1 Cuff, what makes the hole so dark ? ' 'Is de hole dark ? ' 
1 It's all darkened up, what makes it ? ' ' Well, I reckon, if dis 
wolf's tail comes loose, you'll know what makes de hole so dark.' 
Talking of negroes reminds me of a colored man who, when 
asked whether he knew the way to a certain place, said, ' I 
wish I had as many dollars as I know where dat place 
is.' This mistake of the negro reminds me of a Dutchman, 
who wanted a man to go out of his store, and said, ' Go out of 
my store. If you don't go out of my store, I'll get a policeman 
vot vill.' Talking of Dutchmen, reminds me of two who went 
into Delmonico's and got lunch. The price was higher than 
they expected, and one of them was very angry, and began to 
swear. ' Vot's de matter ? ' ■ Matter enough ; noine tollars 
for lunch, — I vill swear ! ' ' Ah, nefer mind,' said the other, 
1 nefer mind. The Lord has punished dat Delmonico already, 
very bad.' ' How has he punished him?' ' Vy, I've got my 
pocket full of his spoons.' Talking of spoons, reminds me of a 
politician, — and so you get into politics, and finish your lecture 

ad mr 

Mr. Gough had many adventures with bores : 

" I was quietly reading one summer day under the tree, when 
a servant announced that a gentleman wished to see me. 
" ■ Who is he ? ' 
" ■ I don't know.' 
11 * Did he give his name ? ' 
" ' No, sir.' 
'*' Where is he ? ' 
" ■ At the front door, in a buggy.' 



BEGGARS, BORROWERS, AND BORES. 297 

" So, hoping that he would not keep me long, I went to the 
front door ; there sat a young gentleman in an open buggy 

" ' How do ye do, Gough ? ' 

" ' How do you do, sir ? ' 

" ■ Don't know me ? ' 

" ' No, sir.' 

" • Don't know me ? Look at me.' 

" I looked at him. 

" ' Now don't you know me ? ' 

"'No, sir; I do not recollect you.' 

" ' Why, you stopped at my father's house once, when I was 
a boy. Know my father ? ' 

" ' No.' 

" ' Don't know my father ? Well, I do. Ha, ha ! that's a 
joke. Well, how do you do ? I got a buggy in Worcester, 
and drove out here on purpose to see you.' 

" ' Will you walk in ? I will see that your horse is hitched.' 

" He walked with me into the parlor. 

" I have a framed picture near the door, entitled ' The 
Return from the Deer-Stalking ': a woman is rowing a boat 
across the loch, while a gentleman in a hunting cap and dress 
is in the stern. When he saw it, he said : 

"'Ah, a picture!' holding his half-closed hand to his eyes 
to get a good sight. ' That's a good picture. Queen Victoria 
and Prince Albert, I suppose ? ' 

" I said, ' Hardly ! Queen Victoria would not be likely to row 
a boat across the loch.' 

"' Ah, I dare say ; but you've been to England, and it struck 
me that it was the Queen.' 

" Turning to another picture called ' Langdale Pikes,' he said 
— going through the same motions with his hands — ' Ah, a 
very pretty farm scene.' 

" I said, ' That is not a farm scene ; that is a view of Lang- 
dale Pikes, in Cumberland.' 

" ' Yes. Well, I see some cows there, and didn't know but 
what it was an English farm scene. Been to England, 
you know. By the way, I want to see your library.' 



298 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

" I took him into the room. As he looked around, he said : 

" What a lot of books ! Here's where you cook up your 
lectures, eh ? Read 'em all ? ' 

" And so he went around the room talking nonsense, till he 
came to the two volumes of the ' History of British Guiana.' 

" ' Oh ! there, I knew you were a practical man ! I like 
practical men. You're a farmer, and here's the book. I see 
you're practical.' 

*' I said : ' What has that book to do with farming ? ' 

" * Why, don't you see, the History of British Guano? That's 
practical — learn its history before you use it ! ' 

" ' And so for three mortal hours did that man drive one 
wild." 

But the bored in this case got even with the bore 
— or at least turned the rencontre to account: 

" A circumstance occurred some years after, in connection 
with this visit, and I give it as a sequel. It is so ridiculously 
absurd that one can scarcely believe it to be possible, but I 
record the simple fact. I give no names ; and if the individual 
should happen to read this, he would not probably recognize 
the picture as any representation of himself. I was stopping in 
the hotel of the town where I was to lecture that evening, when 
this gentleman called, who said he had come to town to bear 
my lecture. We chatted awhile, and he left me. While I was 
speaking, I saw him in the audience. Soon I came to a point 
where I needed an illustration of the stolidity or stupidity of a 
regular bore, when the idea seized me — ' Why not use this gen- 
tleman's visit at my house ? Ah, it would be too barefaced.' 
The temptation grew on me, and as I was speaking I argued 
the point. ' I do not believe he will take, yet it will hardly do.' 
Still I seemed to be seized with an almost irresistible desire to 
use the circumstance of his visit. Perhaps it was impudent, but 
I did it. As I looked on his face, and remembered him at my 
house, the risk of his taking it grew less, and I told the whole 
story through. He seemed to enjoy it, for he laughed when 



BEGGARS, BORROWERS, AND BORES. 299 

others laughed. After the lecture was over, he called on me at 
the hotel. Now, I thought, I shall catch it ; but to my utter 
surprise, he said : 

" ■ Well, Gough, I enjoyed your lecture first-rate ; but the best 
part of the whole was about that man who called on you ; for 
don't you remember I called at your house once, and I remem- 
ber your library and pictures. It was first-rate.' 

" ' It is almost past belief that any man should be so obtuse, 
but so it was.' " 

One afternoon, in Roxbury, Mass., the lecturer was 
resting preparatory to an address which he was to 
deliver that evening. Two ladies called, and asked 
to see him. 

His wife replied: u Mr. Gough is resting." 

" We will keep him but a minute, we came from the 
next town, and wish very much to see him." 

" So I was called," he says, " and came into the 
room half asleep in not very good humor. There 
were two strange ladies seated on the sofa, who 
looked at me and then complacently smiled at each 
other. 

" i Ladies, did you wish to see me ? ' 

" ' Yes, we called for that purpose.' 

" ' What did you want ? ' 

" ' Oh, we do not want anything. We live in 
Hingham, and we've heard you lecture, and, we were 
in Roxbury, and we found out where you lived, and 
we don't want anything, but we thought we would 
like to see how you looked in the daytime, for we've 
never seen you except in the evening/ 

"'Is that all?' 

" ' Yes, that's all we wanted/ 

"'Good afternoon, ladies.' 



300 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

" And I went back to my room with my rest com- 
pletely broken by the curiosity that desired to see 
how I looked in the daytime." 

As the disturbed sleeper returns to his sofa, we may 
all of us cry as he did: 

u O, wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us, 
To see oursels as ithers see us ! 
It wad frae monie a blunder free us, 
And foolish notion. ,, 



IV. 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCES ON THE PLATFORM. 

The platform adventures of platform monarchs are 
of perennial interest. Those who are themselves 
public speakers study them for instructive hints and 
suggestions — and sometimes in search of the secret of 
Dickens's " Circumlocution Office," — "how not to do 
it." To others they give a peep into a strange 
world, as fascinating as a glance behind, the scenes is 
to the play-goer. 

In some phases of his career, Mr. Gough has (uncon- 
sciously and modestly) borrowed the pen of Boswell, 
and described himself in the rdle of Dr. Johnson. 
Nowhere is he more satisfactorily confiding than 
upon this theme. 

As to his methods of preparation, he tells us that 
at the start he " only told a story." " I had no litera- 
ture," he says, a no scientific knowledge, no beautiful 
thoughts clothed in beautiful language. I had a 
story to tell, and I told it. It was a story of priva- 
tion, of suffering; a story of struggle and final vic- 
tory; a story of hope and despair; a story of God's 
mercy; a story of life — every word of which I felt in 
the deepest depths of my own soul. ... I knew 
nothing of grammar or rhetoric. Logic was a term 
that I could not define. I had occasionally an idea, 



302 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

when I went before an audience, that I should relate 
some story, or use some illustration; but when, 
where, or how, I could not tell. . . . For seven- 
teen years I was constantly on the lookout — in travel- 
ing, conversation, reading, strolling the streets, in 
society — for illustrations, incidents, facts that I could 
use in temperance lectures; not exactly storing them 
in my mind, but letting them float on the surface, 
ready at the moment when required." ' 

As an instance of the readiness with which he 
turned daily happenings to account, take this occur- 
rence: 

" At Rhinebeck, many years ago, I was entertained by Mr. 
Freeborn Garretson, who then resided on a beautiful estate near 
the Hudson River. 

" We were walking through the grounds one morning, when 
he said to me : ' I am sorry you do not see us in the summer- 
time ; we now look very barren and desolate ; the trees are so 
utterly without foliage, they might be dead trees for all the evi- 
dence they give of life. It is winter time with us now ; but 
come to us in the summer, and under the shade of these grand 
trees you may enjoy a cool and exquisite refreshment/ 

" I went in the evening to the lecture, and as I was passing 
into the church, a gentleman said to me : ' I am glad you are 
come to help us, for the temperance cause is dead in Rhine- 
beck.' 

" During my speech, I said, ' A gentleman said to me on the 
threshold of this house this evening, 'the temperance cause is 
dead in Rhinebeck.' No, it is not dead ; it was born in the 
Church of Christ, and can never die." 

" Then Mr Garretson's remarks in the morning flashed into 
my mind, and I said : ' If I should say to you, as I passed 
through the streets of your village, ' Cut down these dead trees/ 



l4< Sunlight and Shadow," p. 349. 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCES ON THE PLATFORM. 303 

you would say, ' They are not dead.' If I tell you there is no 
evidence of life, there is no bud, no blossom, no leaf, and ask 
you to cut them down, and plant living trees, you might tell me : 
1 It is winter-time with us now. There is neither bud, blossom, 
nor leaf, but the sap is in these trees ; and by-and-by the warm 
spring rain will water the roots, the sun will shine on the 
branches, and they will bud, blossom, and leaf out, and as 

" ' The tree-tops stir not, 
But stand and peer on Heaven's bright face, as though 
It slept, and they were loving it/ 

'you may stand under their deep shade, and enjoy the cool 
refreshment thereof.' So with our temperance-tree. There 
may be but few, if any, signs of life. It may be winter-time 
with us ; but the sap is in the tree, and by-and-by the refreshing 
rain of public sentiment will water the roots, and the warm sun 
of woman's influence will shine upon the branches, and it will 
bud, and blossom, and leaf out ; and the branches, hanging 
heavy with foliage, shall touch the earth, and spring up again, 
like the banyan-tree, and cover the land, and under its shade 
every poor victim of this vice shall find a refuge.' 

" ' Now, when I commenced my speech I had no idea I should 
use Mr. Garretson's remarks, and the line of poetry I had read 
a few days before in Festus." l 

Mr. Gough assures his readers that he never wrote 
or studied his illustrations. These were all worked 
out on the platform and before the audience — " an 
awful risk," as he confesses. As for the anecdotes 
which he told in such numbers and with such effect, 
he says: " When I find a good story, I appropriate it, 
and use it. Some stories I make by putting a funny- 
thought into a narrative or dialogue, some I find in 
the newspapers, some are related to me by others, and 



1 •" Sunlight and Shadow," pp, 350,351. 



304 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

some occur in my own experience. ... I think 
the public will not charge me with introducing a 
funny story except to illustrate a point, and, besides, 
I find that a good story, well told, relieves an audience 
wonderfully." ■ 

In his use of stories, and in his manufacture of them, 
Mr. Gough resembles two other geniuses, one of the 
past, the other of the present, viz., Daniel O'Connell 
and Chauncey M. Depew, both of whom have made a 
similar confession. 

In his earlier years on the platform, Mr. Gough was 
so incessantly occupied that he had little time for in- 
tellectual culture. Whatever reading he did was 
desultory and useless because of ill-direction or bad 
choice. It may be said of him, as perhaps of no other 
man, that he got a liberal education on the platform. 
Feeling more and more, as draughts were made upon 
his mind, the need of knowledge, he went in search 
of it, — taught himself to think, — learned how to read, 
— mastered the subjects on which he spoke, — and 
graduated from one of the best universities in the 
world — the University of Adversity, with experience 
for the faculty, men and women for fellow students, 
life for a text-book, and character for his diploma. 

After the second return from Great Britain, Mr. 
Gough, as we have seen, 2 pursued a different method 
of preparation, and began to write his lectures. All 
of those on miscellaneous topics were thus produced. 
In the enjoyment of leisure, throned in an ample 
library, with an intellect self-trained, and aided by 
the habits of the platform, he prepared, as any scholar 



1 " Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 354-355. 2 Ante, p. 212, sq. 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCES ON THE PLATFORM. 305 

might and would, with painstaking diligence, and pen 
in hand. 

The later, like the earlier, efforts, however, lacked a 
logical form. Mr. Gough was sensitive on the sub- 
ject of logic. 

" I am not logical, he says with gentle irony, I 
cannot possibly be logical, when so many wiser men 
than I am, declare that I am not. I never pretended 
to logic; I hardly know what it means. I have an 
idea that logic may be used to prove strange things. 
When I was a boy I heard that a young student visit- 
ing his home during his vacation, was asked by his 
father to give him a specimen of logic. ' Well,' said 
he, i I can prove that this eel pie is a pigeon.' * How 
so ? ' asked the father. * Why an eel pie is a Jack 
pie, a Jack pie is a John pie, and a John pie is a pie- 
John (pigeon).' 'Good! ' exclaimed the father, i now 
for that I'll make you a present of a chestnut horse 
to-morrow.' On the morrow, with a bridle on his 
arm, the young logician accompanied his father to 
the field, when they stopped under the shade of a 
tree. 

" ' There's your horse, bridle him.' 

Ui But I see no horse.' 

"'Certainly, there is a horse — a chestnut horse.' 
And the old gentleman touched a horse chestnut with 
his foot, adding : ' If a John pie is a pie-John, a horse 
chestnut must be a chestnut horse ; its a poor rule 
that will not work both ways.' " J 

There is a good deal of reason in Mr. Gough's sus- 
picions of logic. 'Tis an open question whether it 

1 M Autobiography," pp. 323,324. 
20 



306 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

does not conclude erroneously as often as it does 
rightly. The two most consummate logicians in 
American public life were Jonathan Edwards and 
John C. Calhoun. Edwards's logic carried him into 
hyper-Calvinism ; Calhoun's logic led him into 
the bog of Nullification, out of which Andrew Jack- 
son (who knew no more about logic than Goughdid) 
dug him with the spade of common sense ! 

Without logic, Mr. Gough produced all the best 
effects of logic. He convinced, he converted, he in- 
spired. He had logic; not, indeed, in the form of the 
schools, but in that best form — the spirit and truth of 
it. 

He set a just value on vocal training: 

" I would advise every aspirant to eloquence to carefully cul- 
tivate the voice, to acquire a perfect command of that organ if 
possible. By careful, earnest, and frequent training, a defective 
voice may not only be improved, but an astonishing mastery be 
gained over it. A naturally harsh voice, which, without culti- 
vation would grate upon the ear of others, may be so brought 
into subjection as to become musical in its modulations. A 
power maybe gained of uttering loud, clear, prolonged, trumpet 
tones, or sounds as sweet and penetrating as the echoes linger- 
ing about the soul long after it has ceased haunting it — as some 
voices will for ever. 

" No man with an incurable defect in his voice should seek 
to become an orator. Think of a speaker attempting pathos 
or sublimity, if he pronounces m like b, and n like d. ' O by 
bother, by bother ! " ' My dabe is Dorval ! ' ■ Freds, Robads, 
cudtrybed ! ' The power and beauty of language are utterly 
destroyed. 

M I once heard a man who preached occasionally, and who 
invariably pronounced ;/ like /. For instance : ' My brethrel, 
pass roul the coltributiol box, but dolt put rusty lailsor buttols 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCES ON THE PLATFORM. 307 

ill, but mully. If you put ill buttols, put 'em ill with holes ill 
'em, lot with all the holes jailed ilto wull ! ' 

"But, seriously, a cultivated or a naturally good voice is one 
great essential. It is said that when William Pitt uttered his 
torrents of indignant censure, or withering sarcasm, his voice 
assumed an almost terrific sound." * 

Notwithstanding his lifelong practice, this veteran 
of the platform acknowledges that his dread of a 
audience grew instead of decreasing: 



it 



"Often my fear has amounted to positive suffering, and 
seldom am I called upon to face an audience when I would not 
rather by far run the other way. A very large audience de- 
presses me at first sight. I have often begged the chairman to 
make an address, and give me time to recover. When I begin, 
trembling seizes upon every limb ; my throat and tongue are 
dry and feverish ; my voice hoarse or husky. ... I think 
in my whole experience I never volunteered a speech, nor asked 
for an invitation to address an audience. After the first nerv- 
ousness has passed, I have but little sensation except the de- 
sire to make my audience feel as I feel, see as I see, and gain 
dominion for the time being over their wills and affections. If 
I succeed in this or think I have their sympathy, and especially 
should they be responsive, the fever is all gone : then comes a 
consciousness of power that exhilarates, excites, and produces 
a strange thrilling sensation of delight." 2 

The truth is that this timidity goes with the 
oratorical temperament. He who would make others 
sensitive to him must be sensitive to them. Sym- 
pathy is the subtle nexus which binds speaker and 
hearers for the time being in one mutually responsive 



1 "Sunlight and Shadow," p. 377. 

2 M Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 341-342. 



308 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

whole. Magnetism is generated by this feeling — 
magnetism, which is the secret of the orator's irresist- 
ible attractiveness. All great speakers are afflicted 
as Gough was. A beginner once complained to Wen- 
dell Phillips of stage-fright. " Ah," replied the Agi- 
tator, " if you ever make a speaker you'll carry that 
'stage-fright' with you throughout your life. I never 
began a speech which I wouldn't have given $500 to 
be safely through ! " Yet Mr. Phillips was the most 
entirely composed of speakers — apparently. The 
elder Pitt, whose courageous genius "conquered for 
his country one great Empire on the frozen shores of 
Ontario, and another under the tropical sun at the 
mouths of the Ganges," shook with fear whenever he 
faced the House of Commons — the throne of this 
Jupiter of the tongue; and (foolishly) drank incredible 
draughts of port to quiet his nerves. Daniel Webster, 
when a boy, broke down as often as he tried to de- 
claim a piece in school; and, when a man, assured Mr. 
Everett that his heart beat like a trip-hammer when 
he even thought of rising to speak. 

When this timidity has been " talked through," 
there comes to all " masters of assemblies," a self- 
possession which enables them to ride upon the wild- 
est storm. 

" Like all other speakers," remarks Mr. Gough, " I 
have been placed in embarrassing circumstances, and 
a certain amount of self-possession has been neces- 
sary to overcome an unexpected difficulty or opposi- 
tion, especially such an interruption as often occurred 
in the earlier days of temperance work. On such an 
occasion I lost all fear and became self-possessed, 
watching for an opportunity to retaliate. The secre- 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCES ON THE PLATFORM. 309 

tary of the National League in London once told me 
that he was tempted to induce some one to hiss me, 
as the sound of a hiss seemed to stir me up to a more 
vigorous speech. 

" I was never utterly put down by an opposition in 
public addresses. I have been sorely tried. On more 
than one occasion I found it was of no use to employ 
arguments with those who were determined to annoy 
me, but if possible would think of some apt story to 
get the laugh on them; and then I always succeeded 
in maintaining my ground." 1 

Mr. Gough was quick at repartee — an invaluable 
gift in a public speaker. At one of his meetings a 
man attempted to make a disturbance. " Put him 
out ! M shouted the audience. " Do not put him out," 
cried Gough; "let him remain: he reminds me of the 
woman who was taking her squalling child out of a 
church, when the minister said — ' Do not take the 
baby out; it does not disturb me.' i No,' retorted the 
woman; * but you disturb the baby.' This baby 
doesn't disturb me, but I probably disturb him." 

He knew how to rebuke sharply yet kindly. 

"Once," he says, " a couple of young ladies had 
taken a seat directly in front of me, and I had hardly 
commenced when they began to whisper and giggle, 
and became so excited in their conversation that they 
were evidently annoying others. I did not like to tell 
them to stop talking, so I said: 'A minister told me 
that he regretted very much rebuking two young 
ladies who were disturbing him and others by talking 
during his discourse, for he was told that one of these 



Sunlight and Shadow," p. 372. 



3IO JOHN B. GOUGH. 

young ladies had just secured a beau, and that she 
was so exceedingly tickled about it, she could not re- 
frain on all occasions when she could get a listener 
from expatiating on the dear young man's perfections; 
there seemed to be so many of them she could never 
exhaust the enumeration; and when she began to 
talk about her beau, she went on interminably. Just 
so whenever I see two young ladies talking together 
in a church, or at a lecture, I imagine one or the 
other, or both, have got a beau, and it would be hardly 
fair to disturb them, so I let them talk.' The whisper- 
ers troubled me no more." ' 

With all his self-possession he was once nearly 
upset. He thus tells the story: 

" I was engaged to address a large number of children in the 
afternoon, the meeting to be held on the lawn back of a 
Baptist church in Providence, R. I. In the forenoon a friend 
met me and said : 

" * I have some first-rate cigars, will you take a few ? " 

" 'No, I thank you.' 

" ' Do take a half a dozen.' 

" ' I have nowhere to put them/ 

" ' You can put half a dozen in your cap.' 

" I wore a cap in those days, and I put the cigars into it, and 
at the appointed time I went to the meeting. I ascended the 
platform, and faced an audience of more than two thousand 
children. As it was out of doors I kept my cap on, for fear of 
taking cold, and I forgot all about the cigars. 

" Towards the close of my speech I became much in earnest, 
and after warning the boys against bad company, bad habits, 
and the saloons, I said : 

" ' Now, boys, let us give three rousing cheers for temper- 
ance and for cold water. Now, then, three cheers. Hurrah !' 



1 M Sunlight and Shadow," p. 376. 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCES ON THE PLATFORM. 3II 

" And taking off my cap, I waved it most vigorously, when 
away went the cigars right into the midst of the audience. 

" The remaining cheers were very faint, and were nearly 
drowned in the laughter of the crowd. 

" I was mortified and ashamed, and should have been re- 
lieved could I have sunk through the platform out of sight. 
My feelings were still more aggravated by a boy coming up 
the steps of the platform with one of those dreadful cigars, 
saying : 

" ' Here's one of your cigars, Mr. Gough.' 

" Though I never afterwards put cigars in my hat when 
going to a meeting, I am ashamed to say it was some time 
after that before I gave up cigars altogether." l 

Mr. Gough justly affirms that the reaction of an 
audience upon the speaker is immense. 

" Sit cold, critical, determined not to be moved," he 
says, " and let the speaker see a slight sneer on your 
face; look at him as who should say, ' What are you 
going to do next V and you will destroy his elasticity; 
and unless he has the ability to turn from you, he 
will be seriously embarrassed. But take your place 
with the desire to be interested, look at the speaker, 
as if you would say, ' We have come expecting and 
desiring to be pleased; now do your best, and we will 
show our approval,' — and you encourage him to do 
his best." 2 

In illustration of this affirmation, he describes a 
couple who came to hear him, and who sat in the 
front seat : 

" They were a middle-aged pair, and attracted my attention 



1 " Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 3S0, 381. 
2 " Sunlight and Shadow," pp. 374, 375. 



312 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

at once. As I arose they greeted me with a smile, and evi- 
dently settled themselves to listen and enjoy. As I proceeded, 
I found them growing more and more interested, and at every 
point I made, one would nod at the other. At a funny story 
they laughed heartily. By-and-bye I related a pathetic inci- 
dent. Then the smiling face was changed to a sober, then to 
a sad expression. Soon the man began to sniff a little, feeling 
for his handkerchief, which he did not find — having probably 
forgotten it, and left it at home. He felt in each of his pockets, 
then wiped his eyes with his hand. Seeing his wife's handker- 
chief in her lap, he took it and began using it. The wife next 
began to sniff, and felt for the handkerchief. Missing it, she 
found her husband using it ; and so, with a loving, wifely 
motion, she leaned towards him, and taking an end of the 
handkerchief, she wiped her eyes with it. One handkerchief 
for two." 1 " 

Apropos, speakers are frequently asked whether 
they individualize when they face an audience, or 
talk to them en masse. Mr. Gough crumbled the 
aggregate up into detail * 

" When I rise there is an involuntary selection of the persons 
to whom I shall speak ; my will has nothing to do with it. 
Glancing over an assembly, my eye rests on certain individuals 
in different parts of the house, and to them my speech is 
largely addressed. I seem compelled to speak to them and to 
no others. The rest of the people are in the aggregate. If 
I move these, I move the rest ; if these are sympathetic I feel 
it ; if they are unmoved I am distressed. I have more than once 
talked for some minutes exclusively to one person who seemed 
stolid or indifferent, trying all methods to move him." 2 

Like some other great speakers — Henry Clay, for 



l " Sunlight and Shadow," p. 375. 
9 " Sunlight and Shadow," p. 345. 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCES ON THE PLATFORM. 313 

one — he had no verbal memory. Hence he could never 
rely upon reaching the end of an attempted quota- 
tion : 

" I tried once to quote the sentence, 'Locke says we are 
born with powers and faculties capable of almost anything.' 

" I began very confidently with my quotation. ' Locke says, 
we are born.' 

" There I stuck fast, and could not remember another word. 

" So I said, ' We are born ; I suppose we are born ; but what 
we are born for in this connection, I am sure I do not know.' " 1 

Mr. Gough had a good many laughable introduc- 
tions. In Lockerbie, Scotland, the chairman said: 

" I wish to introduce Mr. Gough, who is to speak 
to us on the subject of temperance, and I hope he'll 
prove far better than he looks." 2 

Another of his chairmen said: 

"I rise to introduce Mr. Gough, famous in both 
hemispheres for his sublime, as well as for his ridi- 
culous." 3 

But an English presiding officer capped the climax. 
Mr. Gough says: " He aspirated his H's, and put them 
hon when they hought to 'ave been hofTand took them 
hoff when they hought to 'ave been hon. Wishing to 
compliment me, and remembering that Samson slew 
a thousand with a jaw-bone, and some time after, 
being thirsty, obtained, by miracle, water from the 
dry bone, — he said: " Ladies and Gentlemen, hi wish 
to hintroduce the horator of the hevening; 'e comes 
from the hother side of the Hatlantic; 'e is to speak 



|M Sunlight and Shadow," p. 345. 

2 " Sunlight and Shadow," p. 382. * " Autobiography," p. 334. 



314 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

on the subject of temperance — a very dry sub- 
ject — but when we 'ear hour transhatlantic horator 
discourse hon the subject of temperance, we 
may imagine the miracle again performed by which 
the prophet was refreshed with water proceeding 
from the jaw-bone of a hass! ' 

" Oh, dear! " exclaimed the " horator," " if he had 
only stopped at jaw-bone I should not have minded 
it; but that awful ' H ' almost extinguished me." x 

He gives an exquisite illustration of address shown 
by one chairman in complying with custom without 
sacrificing his own views: 

" ' Friends ' often presided at my lectures, and on one occa- 
sion, a gentleman belonging to that Society, was invited to 
take the chair. He was one of the most refined and cultivated 
men I ever met. We were often his guests, and were charmed 
with him. He was in the committee-roorn, when the chairman 
of the committee asked him if he would be kind enough, before 

he introduced me to call on the Rev. W. R , rector of 

C Church, Chelsea, to offer prayer. Now, it was quite 

contrary to his ideas to give any man a title, or to ask any man 
to pray. He smiled, and bowed assent. I wondered how he 
would manage — when he rose, and said in his sweet clear 
voice : 

'■' ' If W. R. feels moved to pray, this audience will be 
silent.' 

" It was admirably done. The audience was silent, the 
prayer was offered, for the reverend gentleman did feel moved 
to pray; and afterwards I was introduced." 1 

In the course of his professional career, Mr. Gough 



1 " Autobiography," p. 334. 

1 " Autobiography," pp. 334, 335. 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCES ON THE PLATFORM. 315 

traveled 450,000 miles and delivered 8,606 addresses 
before more than 9,000,000 hearers. This record is 
without a parallel in ancient or modern times. Even 
for this wiry itinerant it would have been impossible 
if he had not gone into early partnership with 
steam. 



V. 

WHAT MANNER OF MAN WAS THIS? 

The professional season of 1885-6, opened auspi- 
ciously. Mr. Gough had never been in greater de- 
mand. Applications lay on his desk in the " Hillside" 
library thick and white as snowflakes. He made 
selections, mapped down his route, and began work. 
His health was good, and had been through the pre- 
ceding summer. 

On Monday, the 15th of February, 1886, his itinerary 
brought him to Frankford, a section of Philadelphia. 
That evening he faced an immense audience, and 
commenced his lecture in usual form. He had spoken 
about twenty minutes, when he stepped forward, and, 
with thrilling intensity of tone and an appealing ges- 
ture, said: "Young man, keep your record clean. M 
At this moment his hand was lifted to his head and 
pressed against the place wounded in Sandgate in 
his childhood, ■ then the arm dropped and hung 
limp, — he tottered, fell, and lay helpless. Amid great 
confusion, he was lifted from the floor, carried to the 
residence of his friends Dr. and Mrs. R. Bruce Burns, 
in Frankford, and tenderly nursed through the night. 
A telegram summoned Mrs. Gough to her husband's 

1 Ante, p. 26. 



WHAT MANNER OF MAN WAS THIS? 317 

side. Apoplexy! as plain a case, said the physicians, 
as was ever seen. " Will the patient live?" was 
the anxious inquiry. " He may," was the answer, 
" but his activity is over." That would have been 
death in life to John B. Gough. He was spared the 
trial of chronic invalidism. Lapsing into uncon- 
sciousness, he passed away on the 18th inst, in the 
sixty-ninth year of his age. It was the form of de- 
parture he would have selected had the choice been 
given him — death in the harness. 

The tireless humanitarian hated ostentation. He 
had often expressed a dislike for public funerals. 
His well-known wishes were respected in the last sad 
rites. A quiet, informal gathering of more immediate 
friends and neighbors united with the family in pay- 
ing a final tribute of respect and affection at 
" Hillside," on the 24th of February. The Boylston 
pastor, the Rev. Israel Ainsworth, and the Rev. Drs. 
D. E. Means and George H. Gould, of Worcester, and 
Wm. M. Taylor, of New York, conducted the simple 
services. The coffin lay in the library, among the 
books he loved so much — dear, unconscious intimates. 
Near it, across a chair, hung a faded handkerchief. 
This handkerchief had a history. Years before, in 
England, it had been brought to Mrs. Gough by a 
woman, who said: 

" I am very poor. I would give your husband a 
thousand pounds, if I had it — I can only give him 
this (presenting the handkerchief). I married with 
the fairest prospects before me, but my husband took 
to drinking, and everything went, until, at last, I 
found myself in one miserable room. My husband 
lay drunk in the corner, and my sick child lay moan- 



318 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

ing on my knee. I wet this handkerchief with my 
tears. My husband met yours. He spoke a few words 
and gave a grasp of the hand; and now for six years 
my husband has been all to me that a husband can 
be to a wife. I have brought your husband the very 
handkerchief I wet that night with my tears, and I 
want him to remember that he has wiped away those 
tears from my eyes, I trust in God for ever." 

This was among the most prized of all Mr. Gough's 
mementoes. Often, in showing it, he would say: 

"You do not think it worth three cents, but you 
have not money enough to buy it from me." 

The most eloquent lips were cold and tame that 
day compared with this fluttering rag! If all the tears 
he had wiped away, and all the lives he had been 
instrumental in rehabilitating, could have spoken, 
what a testimony they would have given! 

On the following Sunday, memorial services were 
held in many places, from Maine to California, of 
which, perhaps, the most representative one was that 
in the Mechanics' Hall, at Worcester — the scene of 
some of the orator's most notable experiences. Here, 
Protestants and Catholics, clergymen and laymen, 
twined upon his brow a garland of everlasting. 

A man's life is his fittest epitaph. The foregoing 
pages recite the experiences, reveal the emotions, and 
repeat the words of John B. Gough. They have been 
written in vain if the reader feels any need of elaborate 
characterization in this closing chapter. Yet a few 
words of broad and final estimate may be adventured. 

John B. Gough's gifts have overshadowed his 
graces. He has never received credit for the sterling 



WHAT MANNER OF MAN WAS THIS? 319 

moral and mental faculties which fed his surpassing 
oratory. Manhood is better, and rarer, than genius. 
Those who knew the great advocate of temperance 
found the man off the platform even more admirable 
than the orator on it. He had in complete develop- 
ment those moral and religious elements of character 
upon which Mr. Webster lays such stress in his sketch 
of that great lawyer, Jeremiah Mason. In his career, 
morality was the bud and religion the flower. He 
had the Puritan conscience. Without this, his sensi- 
tiveness and natural inclination to yield would have 
incapacitated him for the warfare he felt called to 
wage. Steadied by this, he " bore right up and steered 
right on," undeterred by the assaults of foes or by the 
more insidious entreaties of mistaken friends. 

True, in his unsheltered youth he sinned grievously 
— so did Augustine. But as Monica planted deep in 
Augustine's heart the leaven which by-and-by leavened 
the whole lump, so did Jane Gongh imbue her son with 
principles which eventually brought him to himself 
and dominated his after life. In his dissipated days, 
Gough made debts, as many as his different resi- 
dences, and as large as his opportunities. Almost as 
soon as he reformed, he went back over that long, 
wide track and paid those debts, principal and interest. 
As a reformer, his sympathy for the drunkard did not 
blind him to the sin of drunkenness, which he never 
failed to condemn as sin. 

No sooner did he discover his peculiar talent than 
he consecrated it. He held life and opportunity to 
be synonyms of duty. Ability, in his view, was a 
sacred trust, to be used for the glory of God and the 
relief of man's estate. " Pythagoras," says Lord 



320 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

Bacon, " being asked what he was, answered, i That 
if Hiero was ever at the Olympian games, he knew the 
manner, that some came as merchants, to utter their 
commodities, and some came to make good cheer 
and meet their friends, and some came to look on; 
and that he was one of them that came to look on.' " 
Upon which the great Englishman remarks: " But 
men must know that in this theater of men's life, it is 
reserved only for God and angels to be lookers-on/' 
Moral and religious principle lay at the bottom of 
Gough's character, and inspired him with a lofty 
purpose. In moral earnestness he has had few peers 
among public men. 

Intellectually, Mr. Gough was far above the average. 
His mind was at once deep and broad. His general- 
ization and his analysis were alike admirable. Order 
and proportion characterized his mental constitu- 
tion. The reflective and perceptive faculties were in 
harmonious adjustment. Zeal was tempered by 
prudence, justice by mercy, and self-confidence by 
modesty, — which latter quality was, however, in 
excess. Who ever exceeded him in humor? and who 
ever subdued humor to more serious uses ? His mind 
was preeminently fair. Judgment held the scales 
even, so that he was seldom betrayed either in private 
or in public, into an intemperate utterance. 

Indeed, the basis of Mr. Gough's mental operations 
was robust common sense, — " so called," according to 
an eminent publicist, " not because it is so very com- 
mon a trait of character of public men, but because it 
is the final judgment on great practical questions to 
which the mind of the community is pretty sure 
eventually to arrive." Common sense held Gough 



WHAT MANNER OF MAN WAS THIS? 321 

aloof from the excesses into which his ardent tem- 
perament might otherwise have hurried him, and 
poised his singularly long and successful apostle- 
ship at an equal remove from the isms, on the one 
hand, and the " doubtful disputations," on the other 
hand, of an era of " sane giants, and giants gone mad." 

Greatness is like money; it is easier won than held. 
The greatness which Gough achieved he retained — 
further proof of the fine balance of his powers His 
intellectual resources are indicated and vindicated by 
the surprising fact that he was able to argue substan- 
tially one question before two hemispheres, through 
all the changes of thought and feeling on the subject 
of half a century, without any abatement of popular 
interest either in the theme or in the orator. Nor was 
this due to his oratory alone. For oratorical fashions, 
like other fashions, have their day. Mere tricks of 
speech and taking mannerisms tire when the novelty 
wears off. It was the good sense behind the utterance, 
and winging it, that sustained the orator by compel- 
ling respect for the man. 

Speaking, as he did, with abandon, and enacting a 
drama, half farce and half tragedy, there was con- 
stant danger of saying or doing something objection- 
able. Yet Mr. Gough never did a vulgar thing, nor 
ever said a word that would bring a blush to the 
cheek of modesty. A remarkable fact, when his 
origin is remembered. " Without early training," 
says one of his biographers, " or early culture, he 
took on both with wonderful facility ; was welcomed, 
not merely tolerated, in the best society, and moved 
in it the acknowledged peer of gentlemen, scholars, 
and statesmen. He never forgot the bitter and 

21 



322 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

degrading experiences of his early years ; but no vul- 
garity in word, and no discourtesy or rudeness in act 
ever reminded others of it." 

Of his generosity the rogues who plundered him 
for forty years could speak, if they would. The poor 
and needy, too, fed on it, and were grateful. As for 
his sympathy, it was as wide as human necessity. He 
kindled a fire on the hearthstone of his heart, at which 
friend or foe, tramp or gentleman was free to warm 
his hands. 

Mr. Gough's social disposition proved a snare at 
first ; but, later, it became a source of delight to him- 
self and to others. Throughout America he was 
the most welcome of guests. Children (of whom he 
was passionately fond) greeted him as a playmate, 
while their parents found in him a fascinating com- 
panion. He romped with the youngsters and talked 
with the elders with impartial facility. When he 
went away it was hard to say whether nursery or 
drawing-room missed him the most. 

But it was in his own home that this great-hearted 
man was at his best. He loved to have the family 
around him, and entertained them endlessly. He 
had two domestic passions — music and reading. In 
the twilight, he would seat himself at the melodeon 
and improvise, without knowing a note, counting the 
time by a self-invented system; sometimes (especially 
before his voice was broken by wear and tear) burst- 
ing forth into song, comic or pathetic as the whim 
seized him — Gough at the melodeon, as on the plat- 
form! Oftenest, perhaps, he read aloud, in which 
charming art he was an adept. When alone in the 
library, if any passage in a book particularly pleased 



WHAT MANNER OF MAN WAS THIS? 323 

him, he would rise, find some one, and share the en- 
joyment by reading it aloud. 

One bad habit he had — he disliked to go to bed. 
If he could get any one to sit up and be read or 
talked to, he would read or talk on until morning. 
Some of his most inimitable stories and recitations 
were given to these midnight audiences of the fire- 
side. When thus belated he did retire, he hated to 
get up, and would sleep long after the other members 
of the household were hard at work. 

The relations between Mr. and Mrs. Gough were 
ideal. She had a strong character of the best New 
England type, and supplied any defects which ex- 
isted in him with feminine tact and self-outpouring. 
The comfort of his home, and his easy circumstances, 
were largely due to her. 1 

Mr. Gough's powers as a speaker have been analyzed 
in previous chapters. He was preeminent as an orator 
in two nations of orators. Yet he had one singular 
defect. Although he wrote voluminously and spoke 
oftener and more acceptably than almost any other 
man, he could not coin striking phrases. He never 
photographed an epoch, or put the whole duty of the 
hour in an inspired sentence. Talleyrand crowded a 
great truth for all time in a mot — " Everybody is clev- 
erer than anybody." The younger Pitt, in moving 
for a committee to examine into the state of English 
representation, in the days of close boroughs, 
asserted that these were the strongholds of that cor- 
ruption to which he attributed all the calamities of 



1 Mrs. Gough died at " Hillside, " after a long illness, April 19, 
1891. Upon her decease, " Hillside " passed out of the family. 



324 JOHN B. GOUGH. 

the nation, and condensed the evil in a phrase which 
was soon on all lips: "This corruption has grown 
with the growth of England, and strengthened with 
her strength, but has not diminished with her dimi- 
nution, nor decayed with her decay." Carlyle 
summed up the history of a hundred wretched years 
in a thrilling climax; " The eighteenth century com- 
mitted suicide by blowing its brains out in the French 
Revolution." Wm. H. Seward focused the philosophy 
of the civil war in the phrase " irrepressible conflict." 
Charles Sumner indicated the public policy of the war 
for the Union, when, in pleading for the arming of 
the blacks, he cried: " The question is not whether 
we shall carry the war into Africa, but whether we 
shall carry Africa into the war." Gladstone declared 
that " the European struggle in one of the masses 
against the classes." Macaulay's prose is as epigram- 
matic, as Pope's verse. Cervantes, in Don Quixote, 
supplied the whole Spanish nation with proverbial 
philosophy. 

Gough's speeches and books are searched in vain 
for such happy inspirations. He has left few memo- 
rable sayings. This was not due to his lack of educa- 
tion. The defect was constitutional. Richard Brins- 
ley Sheridan owed no more to schools than Gough 
did. Nevertheless, Sheridan's speeches are full of 
mots, while his plays sparkle with epigrams. Bunyan 
was not a learned man, yet the immortal tinker gave 
the world its finest allegory. Shakespeare was not a 
scholar; but his plays are handbooks of familiar 
quotations. The truth is, that Gough did not possess 
the literary faculty. He could not balance dainty 
periods, nor utter brilliant phrases. He was clumsy 



WHAT MANNER OF MAN WAS THIS? 325 

with the pen, and, in speaking, vitalized his matter by 
his manner. His style was discursive — made so 
partly by the habits of the platform, but more by the 
bent of his genius. 

We are confident that an academic education would 
have hurt more than it could have helped him. Sam- 
son was probably a better-looking man after Delilah 
had shaved off his hair — but his strength was gone! 
A fastidious culture would have refined away much 
of Gough's popular power. What he might have 
gained in routine knowledge would have poorly com- 
pensated us for what he must have lost in spontaneity. 
One day on a journey he met Wendell Phillips. In 
the course of their chat he lamented his lack of edu- 
cation. " Why," replied the great master of classic 
speech, " any scholar who hears you perceives at once 
your lack of educational training, so-called; but" — 
added he, with a smile — " perhaps in your case the 
world is all the better for that." 

One memorable sentence Mr. Gough did utter — 
not because of any sparkle in it, but because of its 
practical turn and accurate self-photography. All 
the events of his career, — the tragic mournfulness and 
failure of its opening, the moral jubilancy and triumph 
of its close, those five hundred thousand miles of weari- 
some travel, the nine thousand fervid lectures, the nine 
millions of eager hearers on both sides of the Atlantic, 
— are condensed and voiced in his last and dying 
words: " Keep your record clean 1 " 



INDEX. 



Abbott, Lyman (quoted), 164, 184. 

Acquinas, 86. 

Adams, John, 100. 

Addison, Joseph, 223. 

Albucasis, the Arabian inventor of distillation, 87. 

Alcohol, the inebriating principle, 87 ; history of, 87. 

Alliance, The United Kingdom, 174, 235. 

America, Colonial, Universal use of liquors in, 99. 

Ames, Fisher, 100. 

Appetite, Influence of religion on, 282. 

Aristotle (quoted), 86. 

Arnold. Dr., of Rugby (mentioned), 241. 

Arnot, The Rev. William, 203, 237. 

Augustine, St., 319. 

Bacon, Lord (mentioned), 51, 320. 

Beatty, Mrs.. 154-155. 

Bede, The Venerable, 86. 

Beecher, The Rev. Henry Ward, 152, 213. 

Beecher, The Rev. Dr. Lyman, 61, 90, 1 31-132, 140. 

Beman, The Rev. Dr., 133. 

Bennett, Billy, Anecdote of, 24. 

Berlin, City of, 152. 

Boleyn, Anne (mentioned), 22. 

Booth, Edwin, Letter of, on theater, 59-60. 

Bowly, Samuel, 240. 

Bright, John, 161, 204, 240. 

Britain, Great, Consumption of liquors in, 86 ; effects, 86-89. 

Buckingham, J. S., president of the London Temperance 

League, 144, 145. 
Burke, Edmund (quoted), 33; 268. 
Burns, Robert, 33; 291. 
Bunyan, John, 324. 
Byron, Lord (mentioned), 152. 



328 INDEX. 

Cairns, Lord High Chancellor, 240. 

Campbell, The Rev. Dr. G. C, (quoted), 145, 175, 179. 

Canterbury, Cathedral of (mentioned), 21. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 324. 

Cervantes, 324. 

Chapin, The Rev. Dr. E. H. (mentioned), 213. 

Chicago, 170. 

Choate, Rufus, 100. 

Collier, Jeremy, 59. 

Collier, William, founder of The National Philanthropist, go. 

Cowper, the poet, 271. 

Crime caused by liquor, 227-229. 

Cruikshank, George, 141, 155, 180, 182, 237. 

Cruikshankiana, 219. 

Curtis, George Wm., 213. 

Cuyler, The Rev. Dr. T. L., 171, 270, 271. 

Dante, the poet (mentioned), 51. 

Dickens, Chas. (quoted), 108, 157, 247, 249. 

Distillation, how produced, 87; cheapens alcohol, Sy. 

Dover, City of (mentioned), 21. 

Dow, Neal, 174, 175. 

Drunkenness, History of, 86-90; proposed remedies for, 89-91; 

main cause of the profligacy and squalor of London, 255. 
Dutton, The Rev. Dr. (mentioned), 171. 

Edwards, Dr. Justin, 90. 
Elizabeth, Queen (mentioned), 21. 
English, Mind of the, 195-196. 

Established Church of England, Attitude of the, toward tem- 
perance, 240-241. 
Everett, Edward, 100, 213. 
Exeter Hall, 143, 144. 151, 181, 205, 206, 241. 

Farrar, Canon (quoted), 229, 239, 241. 
Fisk, Gen. Clinton B., 267. 
Florence, City of (mentioned), 51. 
Folkestone, 21, 155. 
France (mentioned), 21. 

Garrison, Wm. Lloyd, 90. 

Gladstone, Wm. E., 324. 

Goldsmith, Oliver (mentioned), 51. 

Gough, Jane, gives birth to John B., 17; schoolmistress, 18; 

religious views, 18; when she met her future husband, 21; 

consents to her son's emigration, 34 ; visits son on ship- 



INDEX. 329 

board, 36 ; pins Scripture texts and references on John's 
clothing. 39 ; letters to her son, 41,42 ; goes to America, 46; 
effect of hard times on, 48 ; death of, 49 ; burial in Potter's 
Field, 50. 

Gough, John, life as a soldier, 17; a Methodist, 18 ; stationed 
at Sandgate, 21 ; drills son, 23. 24; (mentioned), 29; visits 
son on shipboard, 36 ; emigrates to America, 127, 128; is 
supported by his son until his death, 128. 

Gough, John B., birth, 17 ; name, 18 ; teaches school, 19; early 
traits, 19, 20; local haunts, 22; smuggling incident, 23; 
playing soldier, 23, 24 ; love of fun, 24-26 ; goes to mill, 26 ; 
meets with an accident, 26, 27; attends a fair, 27; early 
duties, 28 ; earns money by reading, 28 ; leaves home for 
America, 34 ; first view of London, 35 ; ship becalmed off 
Sandgate, 36; sees parents and sister, 36; the voyage, $6; 
makes new friends, 37 ; reaches America, 37 ; journey up the 
Hudson, 38; Oneida county farm, 38; opinion of American 
weather, 39; finds fresh proofs of his mother's love and care, 
39; letter to mother (quoted), 39, 40; leaves farm, 42; in 
New York, 43 ; apprentice in bookbindery, 43, 44 ; first 
boarding-place, 44; meets a Good Samaritan, 45; bright 
prospects, 45 ; urges parents to emigrate, 45 ; housekeeping 
with mother and sister, 46 ; hard times, 47 ; mother's death, 
49; his feelings, 49, 50; the pauper funeral, 50; effect of 
mother's death on him, 50-52; in good company, 52 ; changes 
lodgings, 55 ; sickness, 55 ; visits Oneida county farm, 55 ; 
returns to New York, 55; becomes reckless, 56; accomplish- 
ments, 56; begins to drink, 56; goes to Rhode Island, 57; 
drinking habits, 58; acquaintance with actors, 58 ; becomes 
one, 58; early views of theater, 58 ; effects of theater on him, 
60; line ot characters on stage, 60; leaves the stage, 61; 
reminiscences of the stage (quoted), 61-63 I a drunkard, 64; 
goes to Newburyport, Mass., 64; ships on fishing-smack, 
64; the storm, his account (quoted), 65-66 ; marriage, 66; 
acquaintances cut him, 67 ; views on a drunkard's pride 
(quoted), 67, 68; out of work, 68 ; opens a bookbindery, 68 ; 
bankruptcy, 69; joins minstrel company, 69; effect of drunk- 
enness on his nature, 70; sends wife to sister at Providence, 
R. I., 71 ; the spree, 71-72; deliriiun tremens, his description 
of (quoted), 72-73; wife returns, 73; wandering, 74; goes to 
Worcester, Mass., 74; death of wife and child, 74; works at 
trade again, 74; drinks worse than ever, 74, 75; disturbs a 
church service, 75 ; delirium tremens again, 76 ; contemplates 
suicide, 76; the touch on the shoulder, 79-83; signs the 
pledge, 83; in hell, 83; effects of self-respect, 84; second 



33° INDEX. 

speech on temperance, 8$ ; humble beginnings as a speaker, 
85-86; becomes a Washingtonian lecturer, 91 ; breaks his 
pledge, 92-94; re-signs the pledge, 93; sees .the need of 
religious principle, 94-95 ; at work again, 99 ; early fees, 100 ; 
first speech in Boston, 100; arrested for debt, 101 ; " tem- 
perancing" tours, 102; second marriage, 102 ; first speech in 
New York City, 104 ; lectures at various points, 104, 105 ; 
first view of Niagara Falls, and impressions of (quoted), 105; 
unites with the Church, 105 ; temperance demonstration in 
Faneuil Hall, 105-106; apostrophe to water, 106; visits 
Philadelphia, 107; staple of his speeches at this time, 99-109; 
early appearance and manner of speaking, 110-111 ; writes 
his autobiography, 109; over-sensitive disposition, no; vul- 
nerable point, 1 10 ; story of the " drugged " soda-water, 1 10- 
114; serious illness, 112, 113; breaks with Washingtonian- 
ism, 115; his criticisms of that movement (quoted), 116, 117 ; 
views on prohibitive law (quoted), 117-118; his fees criti- 
cised, 118; lack of self-esteem, 119; visits Virginia, 119; 
description of slave auction, 119, 120; mock serenade in 
Lynchburg, 120; speech there, 120-121; brain fever, 121; 
speech to negroes in Richmond, 122; views of slavery, 123; 
work among children, 123; summary of five years, 123- 
124; mobbed in Faneuil hall, 124-125; timidity before an 
audience, 126, 127 ; his father arrives in America, 127, 128; 
moves from Roxbury to Boston, 128 ; moves from Boston to 
"Hillside," 128; "Hillside " described, 128 ; lecture habits, 
128; visits Canada, 1 29-1 31 ; cells upon two ladies, 1 29-1 21 ; 
early traveling, 131; at Pittsburgh, Alleghany City, and 
Cincinnati, 131; writing the pledge in albums, 132; at 
Halifax, Nova Scotia, 132; laughable experience at Col- 
burg, Canada, 133; effects of his advocacy, 134, 135; 
invited to Great Britain, 139; reluctance to go, 139, 140; 
lands at Liverpool, 140 ; reaches London, 141 ; day of his 
English debut, 143; evening of debut, 145; newspaper 
account of debut, 146-150; in Scotland, 152, 153; speaks at 
Edinburgh, 1 53 ; fete in Surrey Gardens, 1 53 ; visits Sandgate, 
154, 155; contract with London Temperance League for 
two years' work, 156 ; work on and off the platform. 156, 157; 
reference to labors (quoted), 157-158; an incident, 158, 159; 
a rencontre at Glasgow, 159, 160; thinks the cause better 
organized in Britain than in America, 161, 162; British 
hospitality, 163; special work, 163; farewell ///*?, 164; re- 
sult of first visit, 164, 165; at home, 169; first visit to the 
Northwest, 169; opinion of Chicago, 170; prophesies the 
future of the Northwest (quoted), 170; vacation, 171; signs 



INDEX. 331 

contract for second British tour, 173, 174; remarks on Dow's 
visit to England, 174, 175; letter to G. C. Campbell on tem- 
perance in the United States, 175; controversy stirred by 
this letter, 175, 176; departure for Britain, 176; arrives in 
England, 179; personal detraction, 179; speech in Queen 
Street Hall, 180; in London, 181 ; rents apartments in Edin- 
burgh, 181; begins English itinerary, 181, 182; learns of 
a libelous letter, 182; name of libeler, 182, 183; brings suit 
for libel, 184; feelings hurt by abuse, 184, 185 ; resumes 
work, 186; visits the continent, 186; opinion of Paris, 186, 
187; first view of Mt. Blanc, 187, 188; opinion of sobriety 
of wine-growing countries, 188, 189; anecdotes of travel, 
189; back in England, 190 ; crosses to Ireland, 190; views 
on the Irish question, 191, 192 ; remarks on famine in 1848, 
193; in the streets of Dublin and Cork, 193, 194; views of 
English morals and manners, 195, sq.\ activity of good 
women in England, 196, 197 ; characterizes English society, 
197-206; condition of manufacturing districts, 199, 200; 
condition of miners and agricultural laborers, 200, 201 ; 
scene in Bedfordshire, 201 ; refers to condition of working 
people in Scotland and Wales, 201, 202; describes Dr. 
Guthrie, 202, 203 ; meets Dr. Arnot, 203 ; acquaintance with 
other celebrities, 204; favorite resorts in London, 204; his 
account of farewell speech in Exeter Hall, 205, 206 ; good- 
bye to Britain, 206; record of work done, 206; spends 
birthday at " Hillside," 209; various welcomes home, 209; 
visits Joel Stratton on death bed, 210 ; speaks at his funeral, 
211; provides for Stratton's wife, 211; anecdote of travel, 
211; his new departure in lecturing, 211 ; success of new 
departure, 212; titles of lectures, 212, 213; contrasted with 
other lecturers, 213; remarks of enemies on his new depar- 
ture, 213; demand for services, 214; charged with growing 
rich, 214; his table of average receipts for lectures, 215 ; his 
comments on it (quoted), 215, 216; years of Civil War, 216; 
his connection with, outlined by himself, 216, 117; " silver 
wedding " celebrated at " Hillside, " 218, 219 ; valuable gifts, 
219; revises and enlarges "Autobiography," 222 ; remarks on 
disputed authorship of first "Autobiography," 222 ; distinction 
between speaking and writing, 222, 223; effects of liquor 
traffic (quoted), 224, 225 ; his story of two clergymen, 225; 
domestic ravages, 225-229; effect in crime, 229; shows the 
effects in three columns, 230; his question, 231 ; third British 
tour, 235 ; enthusiastic reception, 235 ; his account of the 
origin of the term " tee-total "(quoted), 235, 236 ; describes 
Westminster Abbey and neighborhood, 236, 237; revisits 



332 INDEX. 

the Continent, 237, 238; first speech in Spurgeon's Taber- 
nacle, 238, 239; finds temperance in fashion, 240, 241; 
changed attitude of the Established Church, 240, 241 ; visits 
"Seven Dials" (quoted), 241, 242; his estimate of Dr. 
Joseph Parker, 243, 244; his estimate of Spurgeon, 244, 245 ; 
his anecdote of the hornet, 246; in London streets, 247; re- 
marks on London (quoted), 247, 248; "Vot's hup, cabby?" 
(quoted), 248; street boys and girls, 248, 249; interviews a 
boy thief, 249; scene in Gray's Inn lane, 250, 251 ; remarks 
on costermongers, 252. 253; city missionaries and street 
preachers, 254; his ideas of practical religion, 254, 255; 
speaks at "Five Dials," 255; speaks in Hoxton Hall, 256, 
257; returns home, 265 ; writes "Sunlight and Shadow," 
265 ; prepares " Platform Echoes," 266 ; leaves Republican 
party for Prohibition party, 266, 267 ; letters in explana- 
tion. 268, 269; his catholicity of spirit, 269; his tribute 
to the homes where he had been entertained, 270; in- 
timacy with Rev. Dr. Win. M. Taylor, 270 ; and with the 
Rev. Dr. Cuyler, 270-271 ; ever-increasing hatred of the 
drink, 272; his patience tried by palterers, 272-273; his phi- 
losophy of temperance, 274; alcohol alien to life, 274-276; 
pathology of drunkenness, 276; alcoholic stages, 276-277; 
his legend of the three choices, 277-278 ; sinfulness of drink- 
ing, 278-279; views on relation of wine to civilization, 279- 
280; his remedies for drunkenness, 280-281 ; total abstinence, 
280-281 ; appeal to moderate drinkers, 281 ; value of religious 
principles, 281-282; religion and appetite. 282; condemns 
use of strong wine at communion, 282-283; comments on 
controversy over Bible wines, 283; his basis of Christian 
opposition to drinking, 283-284 ; queer incidences of exegesis, 
284; place of prohibitory law in temperance reform, 284-285; 
appreciation of cooperative agents and agencies, 286, 287 ; 
tribute to the W. C. T. U. (quoted). 287; opinion of refuges 
and homes, 287 ; his opinion of temperance restaurants, 287, 
288; an optimist, 288; remarks on progress, 289, 290; his 
mastery of the temperance cyclopaedia, 290, 291 ; various 
experiences with beggars, borrowers, and bores, 292-300; 
adventures on the platform, 301, 302 ; methods of prepara- 
tion, 303 ; use of illustration, 303 ; use of stories, 304; teaches 
himself to think, 304; change of method of preparation, 304; 
lack of logic, 305, 306 ; value of vocal training, 306, 307 ; his 
fear of an audience. 307, 308 ; self-possession, 308; power of 
repartee, 309, 310; a cigar story, 310, 311 ; how to embarrass a 
speaker (quoted), 311 ; how to help one illustrated, 311,312; 
habit of selecting persons to talk to, 312; lack of verbal 



index. 333 

memory, 313; some of his chairmen, 313, 314; statistics of 
his professional life, 314, 315; stricken with apoplexy while 
speaking in Philadelphia, 316; his death, 316; funeral at 
" Hillside," 317, 318 ; various memorial services, 318 ; final 
estimate, 318-325. 

Gough, Mrs. Mary, Sketch of, 102 ; marries John B., 102- 
103; first home in Roxbury, 103; joins Mt. Vernon Church, 
Boston. 105; residence at " Hillside," 128 ; goes with her hus- 
band to Cincinnati, 131 ; accompanies hirn to Great Britain, 
141; second English visit, 176; visits the continent, 186; 
views skulls at Cologne, 189; death of two brothers, 209 ; 
her husband's traveling companion, 215; adopts family of 
younger brother, 218; letter of thanks to Silver- Wedding 
Committee, 220, 221 ; goes with husband to Britain in 1878, 
235 : a true helpmeet, 323 ; death, 323 (note). 

Gough, Miss, sister of John B., 19; (mentioned), 36; emigrates 
to America, 46 ; out of work, 47 ; announces mother's death 
to John, 49; changes lodgings, and gets work, 55 ; married, 
and sends for her brother's wife, 71, 218: prosperity, 218. 

Gould, The Rev. Dr. George, 171, 176. 

Grant, Deacon Moses, 61, 100, 101, 103, 124-127, 140, 151. 

Guthrie, The Rev. Dr. Thos., 153, 202, 203, 237. 

Hall, The Rev. Dr. John, 190. 

Hall, The Rev. Dr. Newman (quoted), 145, 203. 

Harrison, Smith, 141, 153. 

Harvey (mentioned), 21. 

Hawkins, J. H. W.,91. 

Henry VIII. (mentioned), 21, 22. 

Herodotus, 86. 

Hogarth, the painter, 87. 

Ireland, 194. 

Irish, The, characterized, 192. 

Iti, Chinese inventor of distillation, 87. 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 51,96, 301. 

Katherine of Aragon (mentioned), 22. 

Kelly, Sir Fitzroy, 240. 

King, The Rev. Dr. Starr, 213. 

Lamb, Chas., 247, 271. 
Lawson, Wm., M. P., 240. 
Lees, F. R., 182-185. 
Liberator, The (mentioned), 90, 



334 INDEX 

Lincoln, Abraham, 33. 

Liquor traffic, 267, 268. 

Livermore, Mrs. Mary A., 267. 

London, City of, 152, 180, 247, 248. 

London city missionaries and street preachers, 254. 

London Temperance League, 140, 142, 174. 

Lyceum, The, 212. 

Macaulay, 324. 

Mania a potit, the drunkard's liturgy, 225. 

Marshall, The Hon. Thos., 116, 117. 

Mason, Jeremiah, 319. 

Mathew, Father, 192. 

Mississippi, Early prohibitory status of, 90. 

Monica, mother of St. Augustine, 319. 

Morley, Samuel, 239. 

National and Scottish Temperance League, The, 174, 235. 
New York City, 152. 

Ohio, Early prohibitory legislation in, l,o. 
Otis, James (mentioned), 100. 
Otway (mentioned), 51. 

Paris, City of, 140, 152, 186, 187. 

Parker, The Rev. Dr. Joseph, 243, 244, 246. 

Pathology of drunkenness, Wilson's, 276. 

Philanthropist, The National, first temperance newspaper, 

90. 
Phillips, Wendell (quoted), 89, 100, 211, 213, 247, 267, 325. 
Pierce, Franklin, 102. 
Pitt, The younger, 323. 
Plato (quoted), 86. 

Pledge, the temperance, Philosophy of, 161-162. 
Poverty, characterized, 28-29. 
Prohibition, Lawfulness of, 285-286 ; dependence upon public 

sentiment, 135, 287. 
Prohibition party, 266, 267. 

Quincy, Josiah, 100. 

Reed, Sir Charles, 238. 
Republican party, 267. 
Richardson, Dr., 240, 274, 276, 277. 
Rum, Footprints of, 224-231, 
Rush, Dr. Benjamin, 90. 



index. 335 

Sandgate (mentioned), 17; sketch of, 21 ; occupation of inhabi- 
tants, 23. 
Sandgate, Castle of, 21, 22. 
Scottish, The, Temperance League, 174. 
Seward, Wm. H.. 324. 
Seymour, Katherine (mentioned), 22. 
Shaftesbury, The Earl of, 161, 204. 
Shakespeare, 324. 
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 324. 
Smith, The Rev. Matthew Hale, 91. 
Smollet, the historian (quoted), 86, 87. 
Spurgeon. The Rev. C. H., 243-246. 
St. John, John P., 267. 
Stanley, Dean Arthur P., 237,255. 
Stanley, The Hon. Maude, 255. 
Stratton, Joel, 79-82, 210, 211. 
Sumner, Chas., 214,324. 

Tacitus (quoted), 86. 

Tallyrand, Mot of, 323. 

Taylor, The Rev. Dr. Wm. M., 270, 317. 

Temperance, defined, 90 ; history of, 90 ; formation of American 
Society for the Promotion of, 90; growth of, 91 ; relation of 
religious principle to, 95; relation of prohibition to, 95, 96; 
high-water days, 133, 134; state of the cause in Great 
Britain in 1853-4, 161 ; low-water mark in America in 
1855-65, 172; causes, 172, 173: result of Father Mathew's 
work in Ireland, 192. 

Temple, Dr., 241. 

Tennessee, Early prohibitory laws of, 90. 

Theater, State of, to-day, 59; letter of Edwin Booth on (quoted), 
59-60; condition of, in Gough's youth, 61. 

Thompson, Sir Henry, 240. 

Total abstinence. Importance of, to reformed men, 94; to sus- 
ceptible men, 95-96. 

Vienna. City of, 152. 

Vine, Arabian fable of the, 277. 

Walpole. Horace, 271. 

Washingtonianism. Origin of, 91 ; defects of, 91 ; criticisms of 

advocates of, upon Gough, 11 5-1 19. 
Webster, Daniel, 89, 100, 319. 
Westminster, The Duke of, 240. 
Whittington club-room, 152. 



33 6 INDEX. 

Wilberforce, Canon, 241. 

Wilberforce, Wm., 29. 

Willard, Miss Frances E., 108, 267. 

Wilson, Chas., 141. 

Wilson, Wm., 182. 

Wine, Influence of, on civilization 279, 280. 

Woods. Dr. Leonard. 90. 

Woolley, John G. (quoted), 273. 

Xenophon (quoted), 86, 



fjSS 



